Chapter One: Not a Creature was Stirring.
'Twas the night before Christmas and the North Pole looked just as every Christmas card artist had ever imagined. The landscape was cloaked in freshly falling snow, with a few simple wooden buildings sitting snuggly amid the drift.
Inside, Santa's workshop was abuzz with activity as elves worked away making fully licensed replicas of the season's hottest toys. Christmas carols were piped in over the speakers, in an attempt to maintain a certain atmosphere, despite the fact that they were all stressed out of their minds. Making his way through the rows of work benches was a large man with a bright red suit and a beard as white as the snow outside.
"Ho! Ho! Ho!" he boomed, "Wonderful work everybody, wonderful work. But let's try to pick up the pace, eh? We've only got twelve hours to midnight and twelve galaxies' worth of children waiting for their presents come Christmas morning."
One particularly agitated elf leaned in and whispered to his workmate, "Don't see him picking up a pad and helping with some coding though, do ya?"
Suddenly a heavy silence fell over the room, with even the carols seeming to stop.
The little elf's shoulders tensed as he saw a shadow falling over his workbench.
"He's right behind me, isn't he?"
He looked at the elf sitting at the console opposite him, but she averted her gaze and pretended to be working.
The little elf turned around to find his face practically squished into a giant, soft, round belly.
"Ah, hi boss," he said, leaning back so that he could look up at Santa's eyes.
"Ho, ho, ho," said Santa dryly, "Let's try to keep those thoughts and words merry, eh, Ehflveihm? This is a time of cheer and goodwill to all. We wouldn't want to have to dock you now, would we?"
Ehflveihm sighed, "No, sir."
"Good, good. Now let's get back to work, eh? That T-Mat Travis isn't going to code himself, is he? Remember, don't be afraid to patch it up with some outsourced filler. Kids get bored with their toys after a week, so they won't know the difference. Ho! Ho! Ho!"
Ehflveihm scowled as his boss walked away. "I swear," he muttered, "one day…"
Santa finished his rounds, inspiring his elfin workforce with his trademark dose of festive cheer, before heading downstairs to the core room. In stark contrast to the simple, classical dwellings above, the core room was concealed behind a large set of rusted metal doors, situated at the base of a rusted metal staircase.
Santa huffed his way down the stairs and came to a rest at the doors, offering a half-hearted, "ho-ho-ho!" which caused a red light by the door to switch to green. He then cautiously threw a look over each shoulder, ensuring that he was alone, before fishing a security card out from his beard and swiping it through a reader.
"Welcome, Santa Claus," said a feminine computer voice as the doors slid open with a hiss of steam.
Santa always got a chill when he passed through the doors; it was dank and gloomy and the whole place looked like an abandoned Soviet military installation from the old Earth 1980s.
Checking the nexus core was just part of his routine and he liked to get in and out as quickly as possible. He had no reason to suspect that he'd see anything out of the ordinary.
He rested his hands on the safety rail and squinted against the fierce light of the core. Wheel's still turning, he mused. He was just about to turn around when the sound of metal being kicked across the floor caused him to freeze.
"H-hello-ho-ho?" he called into the dark, nervously.
No response.
His gloves creaked as he tightened his fists and took a deep breath, expanding his belly by two sizes.
"It's OK Nick, don't go jumping at shadows now," he murmured to himself.
He took a step towards the door but then froze again as he spotted something in the dim light.
"What? What are…" suddenly his confusion gave way to shocked realisation.
"No, it can't be! No, stay back! Please, oh God, noooooooooooo-ho-ho!"
His scream carried out into the cold night air, before being cut off.
Amy Pond lay asleep in her bed, but it wasn't visions of sugar plums that danced in her head. She was restless, her face and body contorting in fits of restlessness.
Her dreams were plagued by a man. A man she couldn't quite make out, but she felt she ought to recognise. He was tall and rake thin, with a mess of brown hair, but that's all she could make out. He was all blurry and out of focus and it only got worse the more she tried to focus on him.
Even more confusing, the dreams felt like memories. Faint memories long since buried. She could see her hand holding his; walking on beaches; sitting on picnic blankets; at candlelit dinner tables.
Who was he?
His mouth was moving, but the sound was muffled. But even through the blur she could make out some words:
"I love you."
Suddenly she became aware of another voice, clearer but distant.
"Come along, Pond! Wakey, wakey! It's Christmas!"
She stirred, her eyes fluttering open as someone pounded on her door.
She propped herself up in the bed, rubbing her eyes and yawning.
"Alright, alright already, what's the problem?" she said, mid-yawn.
"Are you decent?" He asked, barely able to contain his excitement.
Amy glanced down at her nightie and examined a strand of her matted, knotted bed hair, before wiping some drool from her cheek with the back of her hand.
"It's nothing you haven't seen before," she said.
Suddenly the door flew open and the Doctor barged in, a look of unbridled joy on his face and a Santa hat atop his head.
"Christmas has come early, Pond!"
Amy's expression instantly turned playfully cheeky as she seductively brushed some stray hair behind her ear and sat up a little straighter, pulling the blankets down to reveal more of her nightie.
"Oh Doctor," she purred, "am I still dreaming?"
The Doctor cocked his head in confusion. "I don't know. I mean, I don't think so, but then again, I'm your imaginary friend, so maybe your entire time in the TARDIS has just been one big dream."
This actually made Amy's eyes bulge a little, as she wasn't sure whether the Doctor was joking or not. As silly as it may seem, that throw-away joke was enough to reopen old wounds and send her mind spiralling down a path of questioning everything she thought to be real. Again.
It was the fastest she'd ever gone from randy to existential crisis, that's for sure.
"Come on, what are you still doing in bed?" The Doctor continued, hands flapping all over the place. "I never can sleep on Christmas Eve," he said as he gently gripped her wrist and pulled her out of bed."
Kind of the opposite to how I wanted this to go, Amy mused disappointedly, yelping a little as she was brought to her bare feet.
"It's not Christmas Eve though," she protested.
The Doctor released her wrist and fixed her with a look full of wonder and unbridled enthusiasm.
"Oh, Pond," his voice dropped low as he leaned in close, "this is the TARDIS. It's always Christmas Eve somewhere."
He let the words hang for a moment as he smiled with that twinkle in his eye. Their faces were practically touching and she couldn't break her gaze from him. Her body tensed and her breathing and heartrate increased. Sometimes she wondered whether he did this to her deliberately, or whether he really was that naïve.
"Right, come on!" he said suddenly, his voice and posture changing in an instant, before he bolted back out the door.
Amy took a deep breath to compose herself.
"Just…give me a minute!" She yelled out the door. "I… need to get changed."
About half an hour later she entered the console room, fully dressed, hair and make-up done.
The Doctor was leaning against the console, arms crossed, trying not to fidget as his foot jiggled about. That ridiculous Santa hat was still sat atop his head.
"Oh, about time!" He called when he saw her.
"Well, you're the one who barged into my room and woke me up. So you can just wait while I have a shower and change. I told you, no more adventures in my nightie."
"Hmm… well, you'll want to throw a coat on," he said as he tapped away at the controls, "it's pretty cold out there." He glanced over at her and frowned. "Might want to find the rest of those trousers too," he said, like a disapproving parent.
Amy looked down self-consciously at her legs. She was wearing a pair of black –admittedly rather brief – shorts, with tights underneath.
"Well you could have told me that when you barged into my room," her Scottish accent really adding an irritated emphasis to that last word. "You know, on cruise ships they list the weather at the top of the little newsletter they slip under your door every morning. Maybe you should try something like that."
She strolled over to the console and tried to take a peek at the scanner. "Where are we anyway? Or when? Or both?"
Before she could catch a glimpse, the Doctor whipped the screen away with a wicked smile on his face.
"Uh-uh-uh Pond, spoilers. You're going to want to see this for the first time with your own eyes, trust me!"
Amy responded with a cheeky look of her own. "Well OK Raggedy Man, let's see it."
She sauntered over to the doors slowly but playfully, gently flitting her arms about.
The Doctor grinned as he raced past her and threw the doors open.
"OK, what am I looking at?" she asked, squinting against the snow that was blowing outside.
"What are you looking at?" asked the Doctor indignantly as he gently gripped her shoulders. "Only the most magical place in the universe! Amelia Jessica Pond, I present to you: Santa' Workshop!"
Amy scoffed as she peered through the inky, snow-flecked darkness at a collection of small, wooden buildings.
"Yeah, pull the other one, why don't you?"
She looked at him and realised he was positively beaming, fidgeting on the spot like… well, a kid on Christmas Eve.
"Wait, you're not serious?" she said in sheer disbelief.
The Doctor looked at her, his expression turned serious. "Amy, I'm always deadly serious, especially when it comes to matters of magic and childlike wonder. Now, come on!"
A minute later they were trudging through the snow towards the cosy little dwellings with a warm golden glow in the windows and wispy smoke puffing from the chimneys.
The Doctor seemed unaffected by the cold, with nothing more than his regular tweed jacket to keep him warm.
Amy on the other hand, had run back to her room to grab a thick parka with a heavy, faux-fur-lined hood pulled down over her face. Her legs, however, felt like ice beneath the sheer material of her tights. You'd think a Time Lord could spare a few minutes to let her grab some snow pants.
She was practically frozen by the time they'd trudged their way up to the small front door, illuminated by a warm yellow porch light. She hugged herself, shivering and her nose made it look like she should be pulling Santa's sleigh.
The Doctor meanwhile just beamed with enthusiasm.
"Can you believe it, Amy? I've actually got chills!"
"Yeah, so have I," said Amy, "I'm pretty sure my toes have already frozen."
"Oh come on, Pond, where's your sense of wonder?"
"This Pond is frozen, so just knock already!"
"I don't know why I bother sometimes," he muttered before enthusiastically knocking on the door.
Seconds passed with no response.
Impatiently, the Doctor rapped on the door again.
Still no answer. Amy started hoping from foot to foot.
"Urgh! Next time, do you think you could land us inside the cosy, presumably warm, little cottage and not out in the flippin' tundra?"
The Doctor looked at her disapprovingly. "I'm assuming the snow's making you extra grouchy, so I'll try not to be offended by that tone of yours."
With that, he casually slipped his sonic screwdriver out from his jacket pocket. Without taking his eyes off of Amy, he pointed it at the door and flicked it to life with a whirring sound.
The lock clicked open and he returned the screwdriver to his pocket with a smug look on his face.
"Did you just break into Santa's workshop?" Amy chattered.
The Doctor tapped the door, letting it swing in slowly with a drawn out groan.
"Yep."
"Oh, thank God!"
With that, Amy barged through the door and into the warm glow inside.
The Doctor's eyes darted around and he muttered, "I'm sure Jeff will understand. He wouldn't put me on the naughty list for this. I hope." Then he followed his companion inside.
As soon as she was inside Amy started jumping from foot to foot, shaking snow all over the floor.
"ThankGodthankGodthankGod," she exclaimed, whipping her hood off to rub some colour back into her cheeks. Not that they had much colour to begin with.
She finally composed herself enough to pay attention to her surroundings. It was all exactly as she'd imagined. To their left was a cosy little living room with two armchairs facing a fireplace. She wasted no time in racing over to warm herself by the hearth, rubbing her hands together.
"Oh yeah, that's the stuff," she muttered in delight. Suddenly a thought struck her. "Not that I'm complaining," she called over her shoulder, "but I didn't think the sonic worked on wood."
"It's not real wood," the Doctor responded excitedly from out in the hallway, "this whole place is a multidimensional quantum structure whose appearance is perceptively fluid, attuned to a person's perspective and belief. This is what we expect Santa's workshop to look like, so that's what we see."
Amy furrowed her brow, looking around the quaint little room and wondering where she really was.
"So, kind of like the TARDIS then?" she offered.
"Yes! Well, no. But yes, I suppose, if it helps." His voice was growing more distant, like he was wandering away. Knowing the Doctor, Amy knew that was exactly what he was doing.
"OK, I think I've managed to stave off the frostbite," she said pointedly after a minute or so of silence. When she didn't hear a response, she turned around. "Doctor?"
"Amy!" she heard him call out from a distance away. "You've got to see this!"
As much as she hated leaving the warmth of the fire, she followed the sound of his voice and found him in a large room filled with long work benches and highly advanced computer consoles. Loathe as she was to admit it, it could only be described as…
"Santa's workshop!" exclaimed the Doctor. "This is it, this is actually it! This is literally where the magic happens!"
He was beaming so hard his cheeks threatened to poke out his eyes, and his hands looked like they were trying to strangle an invisible elf.
He whooshed into the room and leapt into a swivel chair with such force that he made several revolutions before he had to grip the work bench to slow down.
However, as he stared at the computer terminal in front of him, his face fell slack.
"Aww, boo!"
"What is it, what's the matter?" she asked as she moved round to look over his shoulder.
"5-D inter-temporal program mapping software," he said, sulking.
"Is that dangerous? Don't tell me Santa's actually a space slug trying to conquer the galaxy or something."
"No, it's not dangerous, just boring. I wanted to build a little wooden train with a little wooden hammer."
She gripped his shoulder and looked round into his eyes. "You think wooden toys are less boring than hi-tech alien space computers?"
He pouted and folded his arms, leaning back in the chair. The look was somewhat marred by the pom-pom of his Santa hat flopping down in his face.
"As it happens, yes I do," he said, before trying to blow the pom-pom away with a puff of air.
She couldn't help but laugh, and gave him a light whack on the back as she went to have a look around.
"Oh, wipe that look off your face, hammer boy. You know what the song says about pouting."
While they bickered and bantered, an ominous figure lurked in the shadows at the far end of the room. It stood in the doorway, its large, armoured body heaving with slightly laboured breathing that was almost like a hiss.
Clenching a fist, it took a step forward.
"So where is everyone?" Amy asked as she examined a soldering iron. "What, is it like Boxing Day? Santa and the Elves passed out knackered somewhere, or maybe off getting rat-faced?"
The Doctor flicked his wrist to examine his watch.
"24th of December, 5725," he said. "12:22pm, local time."
Amy scrunched her face in confusion. "Shouldn't this place be bustling then?"
Suddenly, the Doctor's ears pricked up and he leapt to his feet.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"I don't know, like a thud and a sort of hissing sound."
In response the pipes overhead groaned and a radiator hissed out a breath of steam.
Amy chuckled and gave him a bemused look. "Aww, is the big bad Time Lord scared of a dickie radiator? Are you sure you're 907 and not just plain old 7?"
The Doctor fixed her with a look.
"It wasn't the radiator, Pond."
"No need to be ashamed," she teased, "when I was a girl in Inverness we had this creaky old thing that made such a racket it took my mum years to convince me our house wasn't haunted. I never made it through a winter there without sleeping in my parents' room at least one night."
The Doctor looked at her in that odd way he sometimes did, like he was trying to figure her out.
"What?" she asked self-consciously.
"Nothing, nothing," he said, turning away and clearly trying to act cool. It would help if he had any idea of what cool actually looked like. "It's just, you never really talk about your parents. What were they like?"
Amy scoffed in disbelief. "What do you mean? I talk about them all the time. They, umm… well they…" She trailed off, confused. Suddenly she smiled and shot him a look. "Hey now, you're not trying to change the subject, are you? The real issue here is that the Oncoming Storm jumps when he hears a bump in the night."
Suddenly there was a thumping sound that echoed throughout the cavernous room, and Amy gave a startled shriek.
"You say nothing," she hissed through grit teeth as she and the Doctor backed up.
"Wouldn't dream of it, wouldn't want to scare you, now would we?"
She shot him a glare that had more ice than anything outside, but he didn't notice, rather he whipped out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it forward as he took a few cautious steps towards the source of the sound.
"Hello? Anybody there? Jeff, is that you? Sorry about the sonic and entering, this one was getting impatient."
"Hey!" protested Amy.
"That's not naughty list worthy, is it?" There was actually a hint of genuine concern in the Doctor's voice.
There was no response, so he continued to take a few cautious steps forward, his screwdriver buzzing away and casting a green glow through the gloom. He liked to think he was conducting a proximity sweep, scanning the area for life signs as well as atmospheric and gravitational disturbances. Truth be told though, it had just become something of a security blanket over his last lifetime or two, to the point that thrusting it out at the unknown gave him an inexplicable feeling of safety.
"I can see you back there," he said peering at the silhouette in the doorway, "and I'm picking up a life sign. Cold-blooded, with some bio-mechanical enhancements," he said, glancing at the screwdriver.
"Maybe it's an elf," called Amy from behind him.
The Doctor spun around, astonished. "Amy!" he exclaimed. "That's their word, you can't call them that."
Amy threw her hands up in mock apology. "Well excuse me, what are they then, 'little people'? 'Fair folk'?"
"They're a completely different species to fæ, and they come in a range of sizes, just like humans. Just call them ælfinkind."
Suddenly their conversation was cut short by a stomping sound and rasping, hissing voice.
"Ssstate your namesss and intensssions!"
The figure moved closer in the gloom, making it clear just what a big and imposing figure it was.
"Ah right, sorry," the Doctor said, scrambling a little, "I'm the Doctor and this is Amy, I just wanted to pop in and show her the workshop – you know, give her a magical Christmas she'll never forget."
"You know it's June for me, right?" Amy interjected.
The Doctor spun around and raised a finger, giving her a look that told her she wasn't helping.
He spun back to face the large figure, his Santa hat twirling about every time he spun.
"Jeff wouldn't happen to be in, would he?" he asked, taking a step back. "I know it's a big night but he and I go way back."
"There isss no Jeff here." The figure took another loud step forward.
"Right," said the Doctor nervously, bumping into a work bench and knocking a tool to the floor. "Well, I suppose you're not on a first name basis with the boss, you probably call him Santa or Nick or Big Red or that Bearded Pain in the Chimney, amiright?" He chuckled at that last one, trying to sound relatable.
The figure came to a stop and cocked its head. "You're here for Sssanta Clausss?
"Yes, yes, that's right! Isn't it Amy?" the Doctor said, grasping for a lifeline.
"Oh, yep, sure are, we're both big Santa fans. I said those department store posers weren't cutting it for me anymore, I need the real deal," she said, pointing her thumbs at her chest.
Suddenly the figure emerged into the light, revealing green scale-like armour, clawed hands and big, red eyes.
"Ice Warrior," gasped the Doctor in surprise.
"A what?" asked Amy.
"Ice Warrior," repeated the Doctor, his eyes wide, "reptilian humanoids originally native to Mars, decked out in bio-mechanical armour and adherent to a strict code of honour and a feudal caste system."
"Mars? Are you for real? That thing's a Martian? What's a Martian doing in the North Pole?"
Before the Doctor could answer, the Ice Warrior raised its arm, pointing its wrist-mounted sonic canon at them.
"Sssilence. You ssshall be apprehended for quessstioning."
"Questioning? For what?" demanded Amy. "Because he soniced your stupid lock? It's not like he broke it, so technically, this isn't even breaking and entering."
"No, you ssshall be quessstioned regarding the murder of Sssanta Clausss."
Amy and the Doctor's heads whipped around to face each other, both struck speechless.
This was going to land them on the naughty list for sure.
To be Continued…