Seasons Greasons gang gang! This was supposed to turn into a nicely symmetrical trilogy like last year's but the world is literally ending and I just do not have the energy. With that said, writing this piece gave me back just enough inner peace that I think I might survive til Christmas.
I played around with whether or not to make this its own thing, or to just stick it in as a chapter of This Is Us. Clearly I'm doing the latter, because the timeline connects perfectly with where the story's currently at, and it contains a fairly significant development leading into Mika and Kurda's eventual relationship. So for that reason, it's here.
Note: There are inconsistencies with Gracie's age between this and last year's Christmas special. Last year has her celebrating her first Vampire Mountain Christmas at age 3. This one takes place a year later and she's just over 2. This timeline the "correct" version. Eventually I'll have all those inconsistencies fixed but for now we just pretend we do not see it. If you wanna read last years, you can find it on my profile under We Can Have A Little Christmas (As A Treat).
And like that one, this one starts with a Christmas tree search.
Chapter 17:Merry Crisis
The Christmas season didn't really register in Vampire Mountain at the best of times. Especially not when it fell exactly one month from the official start of Council. And especially, especially not with how this particular year was going.
The mountain itself was a swirling sea of chaos. Between the tunnel collapse tragedy and the rapidly spreading flu outbreak, both staff and morale were in short supply. The cause of the tunnel collapse was still a mystery, but medics had traced the flu outbreak back to an old General who'd arrived several weeks before Mika became the first confirmed case. Although Mika was relieved to find out he wasn't actually Patient Zero, he didn't have time to celebrate. It was all hands on deck which meant Mika and Arrow were assisting in areas Princes wouldn't normally be involved in. Paris spent most of his time in the Hall of Princes, where access was restricted to minimize the risk of him contracting the flu at his age. And to top it all off, Seba was stretched so thin filling in for his various missing staff members he no longer had time to oversee things from a Quartermaster's perspective. And there was only one other vampire with enough energy, experience, and administrative skills to handle all thar.
So Mika agreed to step in as interim Quartermaster - after making Seba promise to finally appoint and train an official backup once Council was over. The Princes had gently nudged Seba about this several times over the decades. Seba always said he'd get around to it, but they all knew he was still clinging to the thin hope that Larten Crepsley would eventually return to Vampire Mountain and take up the mantle of Seba's protege once again.
That's neither here nor there, but it's a key factor to why Mika didn't even want to touch Christmas with a ten foot pole. Normally he'd be all over this, dignity be damned. Anything to make Gracie happy. But the timing truly couldn't have been worse. And Kurda had made her a little advent calendar to track how many sleeps til Santa touched down in Vampire Mountain, so fudging the dates wasn't an option.
So tonight, a week before Christmas, they'd get the tree. It was now or never - Paris finally had a spare hour to watch Gracie, so Mika and Kurda bundled up and ventured out to the snow. Putting up a tree isn't common practice in Vampire Mountain. But within the micro-universe Mika and Kurda share, Gracie is the reason for the season.
"It's not going to fit." Kurda remarked, standing with his hands on his hips as he looked disparagingly up and down the behemoth of a spruce that had drawn Mika in like a moth to a flame. Kurda had been short with Mika for the past week and a half, following the incident where Mika fell asleep while watching Gracie, and Kurda arrived back at their room to find she'd used his most recent cartography project as a colouring page. Weeks of hard work rendered completely useless in minutes. Mika was a lot more apologetic than Gracie, yet he was the one who bore the brunt of Kurda's grudge. But Mika had no shortage of his own chaos to deal with, so by this point he was over it.
"Of course it's going to fit. It's only a few inches taller than the one we got last year." Mika replied, voice thin with impatience. Lately, his Gracie time had been severely reduced by the clusterfuck that was his schedule and he felt awful about it. So when she looked him in the eye and told him she wanted "a big tree", he took it to heart. It wouldn't make up for how absent he'd been, but it would definitely make her smile.
"The one we got last year barely fit!" Kurda's protest derailed Mika's train of thought, and he glared.
"Which means this one will fit perfectly." Mika wasn't backing down. There weren't a lot of trees to choose from - the harsh weather conditions around Vampire Mountain kept greenery in short supply. It was a miracle this one had grown as well as it did.
"I'm sorry, Mika. I have no choice but to deploy my monthly veto here. This is not the tree. We have to keep looking." Kurda objected through chattering teeth.
"Veto rejected. This is the tree." Mika replied decisively. Cold and miserable as he was, he could already see Gracie's face lighting up like a firework when she saw it. And that prospect was giving him his first dose of Serotonin in at least a week and a half.
"You can't reject a veto! Don't you dare pull rank on me."
"Are you just here to provide useless commentary?" Mika exhaled a long-suffering sigh, watching his breath disappear into the darkness. The tree was big, that much was sure. But it wasn't too big.
"I'm here to make sure you chose an appropriately-sized tree! Which you're completely botching. You didn't even want to come out here in the first place, and now you're digging your heels in just for the sake of disagreeing with me!" Kurda fired back. His eyes were alight with so much conviction Mika would've been impressed if he wasn't so cold.
"So, useless commentary it is. In the unlikely event I'm wrong and the tree doesn't fit, won't that mean you botched your job?" Said Mika tonelessly. Without a backward glance at Kurda, he hefted the battle axe he'd borrowed from the sporting halls and took aim.
"Don't do it, don't you - Mika Ver Leth, you put that axe down right now, or so help me - "
A few deft swings of the axe, and the tree fell heavily into the snow.
"There. Got the tree." Mika deadpanned. Kurda threw his hands up in exasperation.
"It's not going to fit. I'm telling you right now. So don't get angsty when you try to put it up and realize you'll have to chop four feet off the bottom to make it work."
Mika took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second. Maybe it was his numbing fingertips or his pounding headache, but suddenly he was pretty sure he'd been here before. In fact he knew he had.
He'd been here the night they found Gracie. This was exactly how he'd spent the final hour of his pre-Gracie life. Freezing his face off in the middle of nowhere, working through a task he was more than capable of completing on his own while Kurda hovered around him like a righteous blond mosquito. That was over a year ago now. And now, despite how much everything had changed, it suddenly felt like yesterday.
He slowly rounded on Kurda, shoulders tense and eyes narrowed.
"Okay, General Smartass. Are we really doing this again? Do you genuinely think I'm just a rock-brained imbecile who's survived 260 years on nothing but dumb luck? Do you think I don't know how tall my own ceiling is?" Mika challenged him, tasting venom on tongue.
"Here we go again! No. I don't think you're a rock-brained imbecile. I do think you're a touchy, insecure man-baby, and you can quote me on that!" Kurda fired back, completely unfazed.
Mika acknowledged a stab of red-hot anger, then he took a deep breath and suppressed it. Normally he was good at that - probably too good. But tonight he found himself having to work harder at it than usual.
"I'm not doing this tonight. Go back to the mountain. I'll bring the tree in myself. You can decorate the thing and I'll get back to work." Said Mika tonelessly.
"Hah! Right on cue! First you get defensive, then you shut down. You're so predictable!" There was a shadow of a laugh in Kurda's appraisal, and Mika felt a flicker of spite. There it was again. The unspoken implication that Kurda was some enlightened, holier-than-thou wunderkind who'd cracked the secrets of the universe, while Mika was the feral gorilla he was trying to civilize as a science experiment.
"I'm predictable? You haven't done a damn thing tonight but take shots at my competence! If that's not dependable as fucking clockwork, I don't know what is!" Mika shot back, voice as icy as the winter air around them.
Kurda exhaled a low, drawn-out groan of frustration as though Mika was literally stomping on his last nerve.
"Gods, Mika… if you can't understand the difference between me personally attacking your competence, and simply explaining that you're trying to stuff a twenty-foot tree under a fifteen-foot ceiling…." There was a strange hitch to Kurda's voice, somewhere between annoyance and concern. And then he had to go and finish that sentence: "Somehow we always end up back in the same place. I don't know what to say to you at this point."
Cold, hunger, stress, and sleep deprivation were all at play here. But what pushed Mika to his breaking point was the fact that Kurda was ultimately right. Mika had spent his entire life perfecting the mask of cold detachment that shielded him from the rest of the world. By controlling how much or how little emotion to show at any given time, he controlled how he was perceived by everyone else. Everyone but Kurda.
"Then don't say anything! This isn't about me, and it sure as hell isn't about you either! This stupid tree has only ever been for Gracie. So if you're not going to help me, just be quiet!" Mika shouted at last. And even before the words had passed his lips he wanted to punch himself in the face for yelling. It didn't feel good. He didn't feel good. All he knew was he was tired, weighed down by a bone-deep ache that had nothing to do with the short walk to get here. He instinctively drew breath to apologize, but Kurda beat him to the punch, turned to face him, and retorted somehow louder still -
"I AM HELPING YOU, YOU IDIOT!"
Dumbstruck, Mika blinked back at him for a moment before looking down to where his right hand was determinedly clutching the base of the tree as he dragged it through the snow. His hand wasn't alone anymore. Kurda's was right there, holding tight to one of the thick branches near the bottom as he walked beside Mika, matching him step for step.
All at once, Mika felt every last drop of that burning, misplaced anger fade to nothing, released into the freezing air as a defeated sigh.
"Well, as long as you're helping, you can say whatever you want." Mika replied quietly after a long silence. "Go ahead. Do your worst. But if you let go of the branch you have to be quiet."
"I can agree to those terms." Said Kurda simply as they walked side-by-side through the snow. No bitterness, no sarcasm, no counter-attitude even though Mika surely deserved it. He didn't think he'd ever appreciated anyone more than Kurda in that moment. Mika was acutely aware he hadn't brought the best version of himself out tonight. And he knew Kurda knew it, too. So he simply put Mika in his place and carried on, meeting Mika's unspoken apology with unspoken forgiveness. Everything was okay again.
Mika wished he could string together the right words to explain how grateful he was for that. The way Kurda always seemed to know what he needed to hear. But something told him Kurda already knew that too. So for now he just let out a soft, weary laugh.
"Oh, good. I may be incompetent but at least I know I can still win a negotiation."
"A negotiation isn't a competition, Mika! You of all people should -" Kurda was about one second from re-engaging, but he caught himself and rearranged his face into a serene smile. "Never mind. I know what you're doing. I'm not falling for it."
"Now who's touchy?"
"Really? You're still on that? I'm just thinking about all the wreaths we can make with the extra branches when we inevitably have to lop the bottom off so it fits in the room."
"I'm not the one who was hell-bent on decking the halls in the first place Here's some negotiation for you: you can pick the tree when you're able to swing the axe hard enough to take it down."
"Gonna deck your halls if you keep this up." Kurda muttered through, chattering teeth.
"Well, I'm going to tell the Grand Pacifist Council you're threatening me with violence again." said Mika seriously.
"Ah, yes. The Grand Pacifist Council. Their headquarters is up in the North Pole, right beside Santa's village and across the road from the Easter Bunny's burrow. If you see the Tooth Fairy's palace, you'll know you went too far." Kurda shot back within an almost lethal dose of sarcasm. Mika couldn't help but crack a smile. Leave it to Mika to accidentally adopt a kid with the only person on the planet who could beat him at his own game.
"Sounds like someone's afraid of ending up on the naughty list." Mika goaded him. He was having fun with this now. Kurda let out a huff of irritation, and his breath curled into a soft, grey cloud in front of his face before dissipating into the frozen night.
"I should've let the flu take you." He growled. But Mika didn't miss the twinkle in his eye.
"I should've left you buried under ten feet of rock."
"At least it was quiet down there! Until you showed up, that is."
"What do the bad pacifists get in their stockings, anyway?"
"Ethically-sourced coal." Kurda fired back without hesitation, like he'd anticipated the question. "What do the bad Princes get?"
"I wouldn't know. Ask Arrow - he knocked over the Stone of Blood while he was drunk, two Festivals ago." Mika reminisced with a wicked smile. Suddenly he could no longer feel the biting cold in his extremities. Maybe it was the onset of hypothermia, but it was nicer to think this brief escape from reality had restored a shred of his bedraggled mental health.
"No way. You're lying." Kurda snorted.
"I wish. You can't bring it up, though. He'll cry."
"You shouldn't have told me that, Mika. You really think I won't use it to destroy him next time he interrupts me in a meeting?"
"I know you will. It's my Christmas gift to you."
"Always so generous, Sire Ver Leth."
"My pleasure to help the needy, General Smahlt."
"Alright, honey. What's the official verdict on the tree your Other Daddy picked out?" Kurda asked, tossing Gracie an unassuming glance.
"Gracie, you don't have to answer that."
The tree was wedged between the stand and the ceiling on an angle, with Mika physically wrestling the thing, trying to force it to stand vertically despite the fact that the tree had more height than the ceiling did. Gracie looked at Kurda, then at Mika, and told them what they already knew:
"Tree too big!"
"Well, you also think one plus one is eleventy." Mika grumbled through a mouthful of spruce needles as he continued to wage his uphill battle. Kurda facepalmed, and Gracie cracked into hysterical laughter.
"Mika, let it go before you hurt yourself." Kurda groaned. "It's just too tall for this room."
"It'll fit! It isn't even in the stand yet!" Mika gave the tree another insistent shove, but he applied too much force and the base of the tree went sliding away from him, launching the stand across the room like a ballistic missile while the tree finally came crashing down on top of Mika in a flurry of green needles and cussing.
"Tree too big." Gracie repeated gravely, looking up at Kurda.
"Take a good look, dear. This is what we call the consequences of our actions." Kurda told her, while patting her soft, golden hair and trying not to smirk
"Daddy stuck?" Gracie pointed down at the fallen tree and Mika's arm sticking defeatedly from beneath it. Mika grunted something indecipherable.
"He's fine. He's just re-evaluating his entire life." Said Kurda. Nonetheless, he helped roll the tree away so Mika could extricate himself from the needles and branches. "Now look what you've done. You're covered in sap." Kurda noted disdainfully as he extended a hand to help Mika to his feet - which was promptly rejected.
"The tree is fine. It's the stand that's too tall. If we had a shorter stand, the tree would've fit." Mika grumbled, still sitting on the floor and glaring resentfully at the tree.
"You're probably right." Said Kurda placatingly. Because sometimes you have to pick your battles. And sometimes you have to quietly take the win and leave it alone.
"Put order-mints on now?" Said Gracie. She sounded impatient, as if her father's festive incompetence was throwing a wrench into her plans.
"Ornaments, honey. And perhaps we'll hold off on that a little longer. I'm sure we can find a way to get this tree right-side up." Kurda replied, shooting a diplomatic smile at Mika, who grimaced.
"Might as well leave it on the floor. At least she'll be able to reach." Mika huffed.
"Oh, spare me the misery. You misjudged a few feet of space, that's all. This could've been avoided, but that's beside the point." Said Kurda.
"Go ahead. Tell me you told me so."
"I'm not here to rub salt in your wounds. The fact that you have spruce needles sticking out of your nose is vindication enough for me. We'll borrow a saw from the carpentry staff and chop a few feet off the bottom. Then we can make wreaths out of the spare branches. It's a win-win."
"So no order-mints?" Gracie groaned, sinking dramatically to her knees. Now that she was two, her main coping mechanism was flopping over and turning into a boneless puddle of emotion when life became too much. Kurda had to chuckle at the scene before him. Gracie and Mika, both on the floor, staring woefully at that big, dumb tree like it was a recently deceased loved one. They wouldn't have looked out of place in a renaissance painting.
"You two are pathetic. Gracie, you're acting like a Ver Leth. Come on. You're better than this." Said Kurda, raising his eyebrows. Mika fixed him with a death stare and chucked a rolled-up sock at his face. This was a regular occurrence - Gracie left her socks all over the place so tiny, harmless missiles were never in short supply.
"We're resizing this tree, and then we're making wreaths. Understood?" Kurda added with what he hoped was firm finality.
Gracie giggled and climbed to her feet, dancing in a clumsy circle. She was easy to fix. Mika, not so much. All Kurda got from him was a vague grunt of displeasure before he stood up and silently stalked out of the room. But he came back ten minutes later with a handsaw he'd borrowed from the carpentry staff.
"Alright, you going to do the honours?" Said Kurda.
"No, I'm going to give you the saw so I can sit here and watch you spend three hours hacking the trunk to pieces and crying when you get splinters in your hands." Mika snorted derisively. "Tell me where to cut, then stand back. I'd hate to screw this up twice in a row."
"About here." Kurda pointed to a spot about four feet above the base of the trunk. "Make sure to leave plenty of room for the star, right Gracie?"
"I made star." Said Gracie, nodding. Technically Seba made the star out of scraps of steel - but Gracie was the one who painted it every colour of the rainbow.
"You are the star." Mika replied with complete conviction. Maybe it was the angle of the torchlight, but it wasn't til just now that Kurda could see how empty and worn-out Mika was. But when he looked at Gracie, it was as if the light in his eyes came back on.
Mika carefully lined the saw up to the area Kurda indicated, paused for a moment, squinted, realigned the blade, prepared to cut -
"Wait." Kurda heard himself blurt out.
Mika looked over his shoulder disdainfully.
"Exactly how long are you planning on drawing this out? Haven't I suffered enough?"
"You were right. This is the best tree I've ever seen, and it would be a waste to chop it to pieces. Put the saw down. You didn't pick the wrong tree, Mika. We're trying to put it in the wrong room."
It was late when Mika and Kurda dragged the tree into the Hall of Princes, leaving a trail of needles in their wake which Gracie gathered up as they went. It wasn't that she was being conscientious or anything - she just wanted to throw them at something later.
The meetings had ended for the day and all that remained in the hall was Paris. He was sitting in his throne and looking over some paperwork when they arrived. His face split into a warm smile as he realized what was going on.
"Don't you say a word." Mika mumbled as he dragged the tree up the steps to the throne platform.
"I wouldn't dream of telling you you've gone soft." Said Paris earnestly. Mika rolled his eyes and Paris added, "You know, it's a pleasant colour on you."
Paris headed out to get some sleep, since Mika was back in the Hall of Princes and probably wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon. Decorating a tree like this would take time. But they had both time and an abundance of decorations. Kurda knew Mika had "arranged" for the procurement of a few new pieces to add to the collection, but he had to admit he was impressed.
"Alright, walk me through this one more time. You rounded up a bunch of cubs and just… asked them to flit to the city and get all this stuff? And they actually did it?" Kurda couldn't help but marvel at the box of glittering Christmas decor that clashed gloriously with Vampire Mountain's medieval-meets-Neanderthal aesthetic.
"I don't know why you're having such a hard time believing that's exactly what I did. Your leg was in a splint til last week and I wasn't about to flit out and do it on my own." Said Mika dismissively as he strung battery-operated lights along the tree. For once the Stone of Blood was not the focal point of the legendary glowing room. The majestic spruce was overshadowing it magnificently.
"Touché. You've always been a bit of a wild card." Kurda chuckled as he laced a rope of gold tinsel through the branches.
"You know when I was their age, the Princes made us do shit like clear dead bodies from the Hall of Final Voyage. Cubs these days have it easy." Mika remarked drily.
"All done!" Gracie shouted triumphantly. Mika and Kurda both glanced over; she was gesturing excitedly to the small cluster of baubles near the bottom where she could reach.
"Looks beautiful, honey." Kurda affirmed.
"May I?" Mika asked Gracie seriously as he approached the holding a handful of bright golden ornaments. She glanced imperiously at them, then at her decorated portion of the tree, then finally back at Mika.
"My side. Daddy do other side." Gracie told Mika with an air of great authority as she stood between him and her ornament cluster, arms crossed.
"I appreciate your generosity." Mika obediently circled back to his designated area. There was a brief turf war when he accidentally strayed too close to Gracie's zone, but all was forgiven when he lifted her high above his head so she could decorate the upper section of the towering tree. And even then, it proved impossible to access the very top.
"Alright, how do we get the star all the way up there?" Kurda wondered aloud as they stood back and pondered this new layer of difficulty.
"We truly didn't think this through. On so many levels." Mika remarked with a wry grimace.
"Well, we've come this far. Haven't we?"
"I'll get a ladder."
"Mika, when have you ever had to use a ladder here? Do you even know where they keep them?"
"Storage cavern 2A."
"Lucky guess. It'll be locked, though. Don't bother Seba for the key with everything he's got going on. We can do it ourselves. Just lift me up." Said Kurda briskly, eyes alight with determination as he stared up at the twinkling gold lights.
"Just what now?"
"Do you want this finished today, or do you want to drag it out for the rest of the week? It's not that complicated. Just stand still. Don't move. Okay, crouch down a little bit…"
Mika warily followed those instructions, side-eyeing Kurda. Meanwhile Kurda walked behind him and began to climb aboard.
"Don't look at me like that! It's just a piggy-back. You do this with Gracie all the time." Kurda panted as he attempted to scale Mika's back like a tree.
"Gracie's my kid. You're my weird co-worker who lives in my storage room - OW! Get your knee out of my organs!"
"Help me up, then!"
"How?!"
"Hold my leg. Hurry, I'm slipping!"
"What leg?!"
"The leg wrapped around your body, stupid!"
"Not with that attitude - aaauugggh!" Mika's retort was cut off by a gagging sound as Kurda latched his arms around Mika's neck to keep himself from falling. Things went south for a moment. Mika tipped backwards in alarm, then overcorrected and lurched his body forwards, inadvertently throwing Kurda forwards too. There was a loud thunk and a cuss from Kurda as his forehead made contact with the back of Arrow's throne, and another gurgle as he tightened his chokehold on Mika's neck to keep from falling off.
"OUCH! You gigantic idiot! What are you doing?!" Kurda groaned as Mika staggered around trying to regain his balance with Kurda still latched to his back like a lemur.
"What do you mean what am I doing?!" Mika practically howled. "You're assaulting me!"
"Did you think the star was going to just climb the tree itself?" Kurda panted added Mika finally found his balance and managed to stand up straight. Kurda was sitting on his shoulders now, legs on either side of Mika's neck. "Hold still so I can get this over with! No, not there. How long do you think my arms are? Get me closer to the tree - auughh! Not that close! You want me to lose an eye?"
"At this point, kind of. At the very least I'm hoping the sap will stick your mouth closed."
"Gods, Mika. Just stop talking so we can finish this. Take two steps back - lean to the right a little bit - your other right. Okay, freeze. Don't move. I'm putting the star in position… aaaand, done!"
"About fucking time." Mika backed away from the tree, eager to finally take in the end product of all his blood, sweat, and sap stains.
The official verdict was that the tree was a certified masterpiece. It somehow looked taller in the Hall of Princes than it had out in the forest.
"Wow. We did that." Said Mika flatly.
"It looks like it was made for that spot. You picked a good one."
"I told you. This is the tree. I never doubted it for a second."
"Really? Not even when you were lying on your floor, covered in sap and second-guessing every decision you've ever made?"
"Nope. This was always the plan."
"Including the part where I climbed you like a ladder?"
"I'll admit that came out of nowhere."
"It got the job done, though."
"Sure did."
"Mika, you can put me down if you want."
"Oh, right. Yeah. Let's do that."
"Try not to bounce my skull off a solid object this time. Wait, don't lean over. You'll fall on your face and take me with you. Just kneel down so I can get myself off."
Mika immediately began laughing so hard that standing upright was no longer an option. He clumsily lowered himself to the floor while tears of mirth streamed from his eyes.
"Do you need me here while you get yourself off? I'd rather not, but I'm flattered to know you're thinking of me." He practically wheezed.
"Oh, shut up." Kurda grunted. "I heard it as soon as I said it. Get your mind out of the gutter." He made sure to jab Mika's jaw with his knee as he swung his leg over onto solid ground once again. But he did that a little harder than he intended. Mika flinched, and Kurda lost his balance and toppled over on the dismount. Being that his leg was still hooked around Mika's neck, Mika came down with him.
Mika didn't even try to retain a shred of dignity. He simply lay there on the floor, laughing borderline-hysterically up at the twinkling lights of the tree. Kurda, also lying in a heap on the floor a few feet away, surrendered to the same hopeless laughter.
"Am I interrupting something?" Came a third voice. Mika hadn't even heard the door open; he looked up to see Arrow looming over them with the most earnestly baffled look on his face.
"You don't want to know, A." Mika snorted, slowly climbing to his feet. Kurda did the same.
"I'll take your word for it." Said Arrow unbotheredly. "That's new." He added, gesturing at the tree.
"You can thank Sire Ver Leth's impeccable spatial reasoning skills for that." Kurda remarked. He raised a golden eyebrow in Mika's direction, to which Mika rolled his eyes.
"Uckle A!" Gracie chirped, abandoning the string of garland she'd been playing with at the sight of Arrow.
"There's the boss!" Arrow's face lit up brighter than the Christmas tree. She ran headlong into his arms so he could sweep her off her feet, lightly toss her into the air and catch her again while she laughed. Kurda cringed out of habit, even though he knew in his heart that she was just as safe with Uncle A as she was with either of her dads. And she loved him just as much.
"Uckle A, look at my tree."
"Wow! You brought that in here and put it up all by yourself?"
"All by myself!"
"Liar. You hung three ornaments and went to go play with the empty box." Mika snorted, tickling Gracie's foot while she laughed at him from her perch on Arrow's shoulder.
"You didn't exactly bring your so-called legendary management skills to the table yourself, Sire." Kurda chipped in wryly. Mika rolled his eyes as Kurda lightly elbowed him in the ribs.
"How'd you get the star all the way up there?" Arrow mused, scratching his chin thoughtfully as he peered upwards.
"Same way we do everything else." Mika shrugged.
"Teamwork." Kurda added, with a swift smile at Mika.
"I was going to say with a unnecessarily drawn-out struggle and a lot of swearing." Mika replied indifferently.
"So, teamwork." Said Kurda.
That got a smile out of Mika.
"Same difference, I guess."
ONE WEEK LATER
T'was the night before Christmas, and all through the mountain… well, Kurda was too tired to think of a word that rhymed with mountain. All he knew was that not a creature was stirring, and that the stockings were hung with care above the fireplace in Mika's portion of the suite.
Kurda was drifting off to sleep when he heard it. For a moment he thought he was dreaming, and it wasn't til he sat up in his coffin and blinked himself awake that he realized there was actually the sound of jingle bells coming from somewhere down the hall. And then, a soft and unmistakable -
"Ho, ho, ho!"
And immediately after, Gracie's voice from the next room, brimming with the purest joy Kurda had ever heard in his life -
"Santy!"
There was a shuffling noise followed by the pitter-patter of tiny feet, and finally the soft creak of a door opening. Kurda didn't know what was going on, but he did know Gracie had no business wandering the mountain unsupervised - Christmas miracle or not. He was throwing a sweater on when Mika appeared in his doorway, looking far too self-satisfied. Kurda opened his mouth to ask who the hell was doing a Santa impression at this hour. But Mika held a finger to his lips and Kurda kept his mouth shut. Mika motioned for him to follow, then turned and crept out of the room.
They made it to the corridor just in time to see Gracie sprint around the corner towards the Hall of Princes. Kurda automatically quickened his step to catch up with her, but Mika's hand slipping around his wrist kept him at a slower pace.
"Just watch. Trust me." Mika murmured cryptically.
When they got to the Hall of Princes, the door was wide open. It should've been sealed shut at this hour, but Mika didn't seem to be concerned. And when Kurda glanced inconspicuously around the corner for a better view, it was all he could to to suppress the laugh of genuine delight that wanted to explode from his chest.
Arrow was on duty that night - fast asleep in his throne. Gracie still had no idea Mika and Kurda were following her. She was about halfway up the aisle, hiding behind one of the pews but peeking around the corner. They could only see the back of her head, but it was clear her eyes were trained on the front of the room - the massive, glimmering Christmas tree and the red-clad figure approaching it with a large bag slung over his back.
"Who-" Kurda whispered, but then the figure turned and they got a clear view of his side profile - white beard and all. Paris Skyle himself, shrouded in a crimson cloak Kurda immediately recognized as Seba's.
Kurda did a double-take, grinning at Mika with disbelief. But all of Mika's attention was focused on Gracie, as if Kurda wasn't even there. There was a strange sort of innocent wonder in Mika's eyes, and Kurda felt something shift in his heart. All at once there came a rush of overwhelming affection, bubbling up like springwater from deep in his soul. It was a familiar feeling - he felt it every time he looked at Gracie. But this time he was looking at Mika.
There was also a burning sensation in his cheeks, and Kurda quickly looked away in case Mika glanced over and saw him gawking like an idiot. He refocused his attention on Gracie; she was slowly creeping up the aisle towards the throne platform while Paris made a big production of placing the gifts under the tree and pretending he didn't know she was there. And Kurda was willing to bet everything he owned that Arrow was very much in on this too, only pretending to be asleep.
It all hit Kurda at once. There was so much love in this room. More pure, unconditional love than he could've ever imagined - in the Hall of Princes of all places.
Kurda felt Mika's arm drape gently around his shoulders, he moved closer and slipped his arm around Mika's back. They didn't look at one another; how could they when Gracie was about to "surprise" Santa Claus by popping out from behind the thrones? And when she finally pounced, Kurda couldn't entirely contain a laugh at Paris's performance. He remained flawlessly in-character.
It was a perfect moment. The type of moment that could never be repeated, not even if they tried. By next year she'd be wise enough to look past the red suit and realize "Santy" was just Papa Paris who she saw every day. The magic they felt right now wasn't forever, but maybe that's where the magic came from.
CHRISTMAS DAY
"…And then I follow him to the tree, and then I hid behind the big chairs, and then I caught Santy!" Gracie recounted exuberantly from amidst a pile of wrapping paper beneath the tree.
"Did you really?" Paris inquired conversationally, an eyebrow quirked and a wicked gleam in his old blue eyes.
"Really really!"
"And what did he say?"
"He say I good this year!"
"Funny, if I was Santa I would've mentioned the time you repeated your other dad's favourite swear when you spilled your apple sauce." Kurda chipped in, side-eyeing Mika.
"Well, you're not Santa. So you're not qualified to criticize his job performance." Mika countered haughtily.
Paris rolled his eyes at both of them, then smiled down at Gracie once more.
"And then what happened?" He asked her earnestly.
Gracie's eager face crumpled into a brooding frown.
"Don't 'member. I wake up in my bed and Santy all gone."
Her recollection, of course, cut off at the part where Paris gently sent her back to sleep with a light dose of magic vampire breath before her dads carried her back to her room. But the brief encounter was enough for that dose of Christmas magic to permanently imprint into her imagination.
"Perhaps you were having a very wonderful dream." Paris mused.
"No dream, Papa Paris! Santy was here!"
"My dear, if you believe with all your heart he was here, then it surely must be so." Paris declared, the corners of his mouth crinkling into an adoring smile. Shortly after, Paris headed out to grab a bite from the Hall of Khledon Lurt. And then there were three.
"I can't believe humans do this every year." Mika remarked offhandedly. He was sitting in his throne, mug of cider in hand, and tired smile on his face as he watched Gracie play with her gifts on the floor a few feet away. Kurda was sitting beside him in Vancha's vacant throne - Mika was letting it slide for the sake of Christmas spirit.
"They establish traditions. Getting into a routine makes things easier." Kurda shrugged, then added - "Guess we need to tweak ours a little bit. At least we were a little more prepared than last year. I'm sure our third Christmas will be a charm."
"Can we scrap the part where you crawl up my back and kick me in the throat?"
"Can we scrap the part where you pick a tree neither of us can reach?"
"I'll consider it. Can we throw that thing in the stake pit?" Mika gestured at the new toy Gracie was playing with; a fuzzy stuffed creature with big ears and bigger eyes that talked eerily at the touch of a button. Kurda had picked it up while passing through the city on his mission earlier that year.
"I'll admit I had no idea it spoke." Said Kurda, grimacing. "I was in a store to pick up some warm socks for the trip home, and I overheard some humans talking about how much their kids liked them."
"I'm less afraid of Lovely." Said Mika bluntly, eyeing the toy warily. Its eyes seemed to follow him as he leaned away.
"You're such a baby." Kurda chuckled. He was grinning as he got up and ambled over to the Christmas tree to start collecting shreds of discarded wrapping paper. Mika took a long sip of cider, rested his head against the back of his throne and sighed contentedly. For the first time in ages, he didn't have a single thing on his schedule today. Paris had ordered all official business to be paused for the day, and arranged for the kitchen staff prepare a extra special hot dinner. Until that was ready in a few hours, Mika had nowhere to be and nothing to worry about - other than keeping an eye on that stupid toy for when it inevitably gained sentience and tried to eat him alive.
"Hey, looks like there's a gift here with your name on it." Kurda called nonchalantly from over by the tree. Mika opened his eyes and made his way over to investigate. Kurda was standing there with a wayward grin on his face and a large, flat rectangular package in his hands. It was neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with a red string. In the corner was written To: Sire Ver Leth, From: General Smartass.
"You didn't tell me we were exchanging gifts. Now I'm the asshole. Thanks a lot." Mika deadpanned.
"It's really not much. Just open it!"
"No. Wait a minute."
"Are you serious? What are you doing? Mika, stop. You really don't have to do anything!" Kurda called to his retreating back as Mika disappeared into the small meeting room behind the thrones. There was the sound of drawers and supply cupboards being roughly opened and closed, followed by a faint scribbling noise, and finally Mika returned with a folded-up piece of paper in hand.
"There you go. Merry Christmas." Mika told Kurda with a thinly veiled air of smugness about him. He handed Kurda the paper, and took the package labelled for him.
"That was fast." Said Kurda quizzically. He was the one eyeing Mika suspiciously now, still holding the folded piece of paper like it was a live bomb.
"Open it." Mika urged him, nodding eagerly.
"Open yours first!"
"No, you. Don't make me order you."
"I wanted to go first anyway." Kurda retorted with a brittle smile. Then he unfolded the paper and ran his eyes over the page. First he arched an eyebrow and winced. "Gods, Mika. Is this supposed to be a blueprint or something? You really have no concept of scale. I thought you were smarter than -" Kurda's voice died abruptly in his throat, and Mika knew he'd finally clued into what this blueprint was actually representing. He watched in satisfaction as Kurda's jaw went completely slack, eyes wide as dinner plates.
"What were you saying about my blueprint?" Mika inquired innocently as Kurda stood rooted to the spot in disbelief with his hand over his mouth.
"Mika, no. I can't… You can't…. There—there's no way. This isn't real."
"It hasn't been built yet, so you'll be able to harass the construction crew to make sure it's done to your exact specifications. And I promise I'll let you make the final blueprint for the builders. You're lucky I can't draw, otherwise you'd be out of a job."
Kurda's arms were hanging limply at his sides now, giving Mika a clear view of the paper he'd swiftly filled with some makeshift concept art. There was a long rectangle labelled "upper west wing, corridor 3". Off to the wide there was a lopsided square, and within the square there were smaller ones individually labelled "desk", "storage cabinet", "fireplace", and "door". And at the very top of the page: General Smahlt's Office.
Kurda was gawking back at him now with rapidly pooling eyes; Mika cringed and looked away. Kurda whimpered out some pathetic sound between a laugh and a sob, and threw his arms unapologetically around Mika.
"Come on. Don't do this. All I did was draw a bunch of shapes. They're not even good." Mika groaned. He was still holding his unopened present with one hand, but he politely patted Kurda's back with the other.
"Mika, you got me an office." Kurda choked out emphatically.
"It's about time you had your own space when you need to get away from Gracie and me." Mika reasoned. "This way you won't have to find a hiding place for all your stuff every time she breaks out the crayons. And I won't have to listen to you talking to yourself while you work. It's a win for all of us."
"But you don't even have an office."
"I have a magic hall and a special chair, I don't need an office."
"The other Generals don't have offices!"
"Nobody here does what you do. I've seen you try to draft a map when the page is three times the size of your workspace. You should've had your own office ten years ago."
"You really shouldn't have. My gift to you is nothing like this. I don't even want you to open it now." Kurda gulped, slowly looking up to survey Mika out of bloodshot eyes.
"The office wasn't intended to be a Christmas gift - the timing just worked." Mika shrugged, trying and failing to sound indifferent. "I've had it planned for months. I was going to tell you after Council, the builders won't have time to start til then. But then you told me you got me something, and -"
"And you're competitive." Kurda interjected, managing a shaky laugh as he wiped his nose on a handkerchief. "Go ahead and open yours, then. You already know you won Christmas."
"Yeah…" Mika sighed. He looked from Kurda's dazed, starry eyes to Gracie, who was dancing around in her new costume tiara, to the enormous Christmas tree and decorations that had no business being here, to the ancient wooden throne he spent so much of his life in. He hadn't noticed til now, but someone had strung tinsel around the sides. What exactly had he done to deserve any of this? And finally he looked back to Kurda, just in time to see Gracie run into his arms. Kurda scooped her up and spun her around while she shrieked with delight. Then Kurda stopped, staring quizzically back at Mika.
"What?"
"You're right. I won Christmas." Said Mika simply. And at last he peeled the paper away. It was upside-down but he recognized it right away and his heart was swelling before he'd even flipped it right side up.
It was a massive framed page that Mika knew immediately would be mounted on the wall above his desk. The centre point was a lifelike rendering of the outside view of Vampire Mountain itself. Surrounding it were detailed cutaway views of every level in the mountain. There wasn't room for every single detail, but all of the crucial spaces were labelled with flawless calligraphy.
At the very top of the page was a bird's eye view of the Hall of Princes itself. There were four tiny, minimalistic crowns drawn exactly where the thrones would be, each denoted with the initials of their respective owners: A, PS, MVL, VM. And in left the corner of the very front pew, in the spot where Kurda always sat with Gracie, there were two more sets of initials - KS & G.
There were other similar additions throughout, little notes that wouldn't have made sense to anyone else. In the Hall of Khledon Lurt, there was a tiny mug of ale where Mika's favourite table was located. In the armoury beside the Hall of Baker Wrent, a little sword sketched where his personal weaponry locker would be. There were subtle personal touches everywhere he looked. The world faded away for a moment as Mika took it all in. It was all there. The place he loved, and everything he loved about it. Home.
He could've spent hours scanning every last inch of that page, but there was still no substitute for the real thing. He slowly looked up, vaguely aware that his jaw had dropped further than Kurda's while his eyes became uncomfortably damp.
"Okay. Maybe we both won Christmas." Said Mika at last. He intended to speak in his typical businesslike manner, but he lost the battle spectacularly and the words came out as a strangled croak. He roughly wiped his eye with the back of his hand, and finally managed to arrange his face back into a casual, unaffected smile.
"You like it? I didn't get the scaling quite right on entryway to the Hall of Khledon Lurt, I hope it's not too noticeable." Said Kurda, glancing critically at the frame and cringing while he pointed at some alleged imperfection that Mika couldn't even see.
"Noticeable? You saw my blueprint, right?" Said Mika in disbelief, shaking his head. "Kurda, this is the best thing I've ever seen in my life. You're so fucking good at this. I don't understand how you do what you do."
"We all have our things. I don't know how you make an entire room shut up and listen without even raising your voice, but you do it every day." Kurda reasoned. He rolled his eyes but Mika didn't miss the light pink flush in his cheeks.
"I'll probably regret admitting this, but one night I spent twelve hours straight trying to teach myself cartography, just so I could be better at it than you." Said Mika, after a brief pause to decide whether or not he was really going to go there. And of course he was. It was a Christmas, after all.
"You're lying." Kurda's eyes gleaming with amusement as he grinned at Mika with Gracie still in his arms.
"I wish. It was the first time Seba put you in charge of coordinating all the pre-council renovations. You'd just moved back in after a few decades away on diplomacy missions." Mika reminisced with a grimace, running his hand through his hair. "Keep in mind that was probably twenty years ago when my goal was to run you out of Vampire Mountain. I thought if I could pick up your biggest skill, I could make you irrelevant."
"Mika…"
"I never said I was proud of it. I drove myself to a nervous breakdown, snapped a dozen pencils, and wasted an entire crate of good parchment only to figure out you have talents the rest of us will never be able to touch. I hope you know that." Mika finished. His voice didn't waver this time. And he meant every damn word he was saying.
Kurda let out a soft, hesitant laugh, still gazing back at Mika with a captivating expression of fond disbelief. The corners of his light pink lips were quirked in a comfortable half-smile and his eyes still had that starry wistfulness about them. Did Kurda always look like this? Was it Christmas spirit making everything appear brighter than normal, or had Mika just never truly looked at him before? And if so, what else had he been missing out on?
"You're an incredible person, Mika." Said Kurda quietly. "Anyone ever told you that?"
"Of course. You tell me every day. Usually you phrase it differently, but that's what I assume you mean by incorrigible." Mika smirked. Without thinking, he took a step closer to Kurda.
Kurda rolled his eyes - bright and blue as the ocean on a summer day - and let out a breezy, musical laugh. But he took a step towards Mika as well, leaning only a foot of space between them.
"Sorry, I misspoke. Meant to say you're an incredible, impossible, incorrigible royal pain in my ass." Kurda muttered.
"I heard incredible and royal. I'll take it." Mika laughed as he pulled both Kurda and Gracie into a tight hug. Mika kissed the side of Gracie's head as she snuggled her face into his neck (while almost taking his eye out with her pointy new tiara). And when Kurda's forehead rested against his shoulder, Mika felt an unfamiliar sense of what he could only assume was peace.
PS - The creepy toy was a Furby. On the approximate timeline I'm operating on, they would've been the hot item of the season when Gracie was little.
PPS - thank you to "Guest User" for your continual lovely comments :) I know fanfiction dot net is kind of a dead zone these days (especially this fandom) so I don't go into this expecting a lot of feedback. I can't send you a direct reply since you aren't a registered account but I wanted you to know I see you, and I appreciate you following along! xo
I don't think I'll be posting again til the new year so Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and see you on the other side I guess.