Okay...
Kerry’s Speech
As a little Christmas/Yule/Chanukah/Seasonal/Holiday present for all the Kittens out there, Katharyn and I have put together a bit of W/T festive goodness to hopefully amuse and entertain you.
Thanks to everybody who has posted on this board, the artists, the writers, the Moderators and their minions, in short - everyone who has made this a very special place to be. [A special thanks to Julia who provided the date for Yule in 2001 - thanks Dumbsaint!]
Forrister (The elf in the festive trench helmet)
Katharyn’s Speech
What Kerry said… with festive bells on. Merry Xmas one and all and compliments of the season to those who have other beliefs.
Katharyn (Well if she’s the elf then I better be the nymph…)
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Title: A Sunnydale Carol (Chapter 1 of 9)
Author: Forrister & Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome
Spoiler Warning: Very limited, set around Christmas in Season 5 between “Into the Woods” & “Triangle.” Spoilers to that point. Reference to a dream sequence from “The Body” but only referring to Xmas, not the events of that episode.
Summary: Everyone is making plans – good and bad
Disclaimer: We don’t own anything to do with the Buffy shows and are making zilch from this except the rush of feedback.
Rating: PG13
Couples: As standard nothing strange!
Notes: The parts of this fic, technology allowing, will be posted daily (as it is already complete!) up to Christmas so check back often. Obviously this may limit the feedback that might occur between updates but feel free to comment on earlier parts if you want… we love feedback.
We have taken a slight liberty with the Spike/Dawn storyline in S5. This version does not go against canon but we have worked on the basis that it was a developing thing over time.
Thanks To: From Katharyn - Kerry for the idea that sat behind this whole thing, this is her gig… I’m just along for the ride, L as always. From Forrister - Katharyn who provided the get up an go that actually got the project moving - and far from being along for the ride, she was one of the engines that kept the train running.
Chapter One
The Magic Box was experiencing a slight upswing in sales, probably because Christmas was coming. It wasn't what any reasonable person would call a rush, but cash sales had increased by about ten percent. Anya looked pensive. She'd been looking that way for a few days, particularly as she saw the Christmas sales figures that appeared in that weeks 'Sunnydale Merchants News'. Sales figures were up all over town, but a simple calculation told Anya that other businesses were doing much better than they were in these last few weeks before Christmas.
"Why aren't we making more money?" Anya complained to Giles who was busy shelving some new books that had just arrived.
"What?" Giles asked absently, his mind on books rather than sales figures.
"Why aren't we making more money?" Anya repeated impatiently. "Other shops are doing much better than we are. Why aren't we doing that well?"
"We're selling more than we usually do."
"Yes, but not enough. We're not getting enough of the holiday trade." Anya was determined to do something and making Giles aware of the problem was the first step. This shop would have been out of business ages ago if not for her with Giles staring bankruptcy in the face.
"We shouldn't be greedy now, Anya." Giles replied, still concentrating more on his books than the sales figures.
"I'm not being greedy!" she protested. "I just want our fair share. Actually I want more than our fair share."
"Our fair share?" Giles put down the book he was browsing in and gave Anya his full attention.
"Of the Christmas sales boom."
"Oh, that." He picked up the book again. Anya was just on about the Christmas thing again. "Its rank commercialism. It'll pass by the time that post-Christmas Sales all finish and things will go back to normal." He replied, not realising what forces he was dealing with.
That thought made Anya positively frown. She became utterly determined to find out how the other stores were making bigger sales and apply it here, in spite of Giles's wishy washy attitude to business, and before the opportunity passed them by.
Her musings were interrupted by the sound of the shop bell. She turned to greet the customers but saw only Willow and Tara as they arrived at the shop, as they usually did most afternoons. She frowned and got back to her planning but her attention was grabbed again by Willow's words.
"What are we doing about Christmas?"
"I believe we agreed at thanksgiving that it was happening at the Summer’s residence." Giles replied, as he picked up another book.
"Yes, but that was before." Willow pointed out as she put her bag on the table. "I'm not sure that with Buffy’s Mom being sick and everything else that they can cope with putting on Christmas as well."
Giles thought about this. She could well be right. She often was. "What are you proposing Willow?
"I just thought that we could help out, you know. Look after some of the cooking, help with the decorations. Give them a bit of a break over the holiday."
"Hadn't we better ask them before we start making any plans?" Tara asked, knowing full well how Willow could get carried away with a plan.
"Well, I kinda thought that if we did a bit of planning first then break it to them later, it would be more of a holiday surprise." Willow admitted, not really wanting to be the one to face Buffy with the idea. That was what Watcher’s were for right? Letting Slayers in on plans?
"I'm not sure that they'd appreciate their own plans being taken over." Tara pointed out.
"They won't be!" Willow felt she was on firm ground here. "I talked to Buffy yesterday and sounded her out a little. They have no real plans. Her Mom is still spending a lot of time in bed resting and Buffy is still pretty down about Riley leaving." She didn't exactly admit that she'd said nothing of her plans to her best friend, but had solidly pumped her for the Summers Christmas agenda.
They were all silent at this observation. The family had it pretty tough this year and they all felt an urge to do what they could to make it easier.
"So what about it?" Willow asked.
Everyone nodded, except Tara.
"I suppose so." She finally agreed. "But only if we ask them first."
Willow smiled. "That’s my baby. Sure, we'll ask them."
Everybody looked at everyone else. Nobody volunteered. While the idea was good the prospect of going to Buffy and her mother with this was daunting.
Willow looked at the small sea of empty faces in front of her. "Ok then, we'll draw straws for it." Thus deciding the matter in the time honoured manner.
At that moment the shop bell rang out in the silence and they all turned to see Xander standing in the doorway. He quickly became aware that all eyes were glued to him.
"Er… Did I interrupt something?" He asked in all innocence.
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"Oh come on!" Harmony stamped her foot in frustration.
“He always was a little slow to get up,” one of her other new minions commented about the latecomer.
“Well he should be up and around by now. The rest of you managed it and I bit you,” she gestured at the biggest of the group, “last of all.” She stamped her foot on the earth of the fresh grave once more. “Get up!”
She had big plans for this group of… group members. And was she going to pile on the pounds after last night’s pig out? All you can eat at the hopeless inadequate bar. Six in one night. She had never managed to take that many before. And they had fallen for it. As if she would have touched one of them. Let alone all six. In turn. Uggh.
Unless she really needed them. And she did. This was a great opportunity to make money and get food. Though she could probably afford a few days dieting. Strictly the pleasure of the kill for her for a little while. Or she wouldn’t be able to fit into that cute costume that she had maimed for.
She hadn’t snacked on the clerk either, which showed the sort of restraint that she had always had in her dieting. Being dead really didn’t make a difference.
Her new minions had all pretty much brushed themselves down when the last one finally made it from his grave. A real weedy guy. She preferred… well everyone in the whole world to him.
He looked up at her and was obviously confused by the change as he looked up at her. “Back for more honey lips?” She kicked him in the privates for the second time in twenty four hours and was satisfied to hear that his shrieking had survived the change.
This was definitely a wonderful opportunity.
It was Christmas after all which was when she was supposed to get things handed to her.
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“Organization. That’s what we need. Organization.” Willow decided that she was the one to get the gang organised properly, so that nothing would be overlooked and everyone would have a job. Last night’s Scooby version of the plan had been less than a success. But with a good night’s rest behind her she was raring to take charge and reorder some lives for them. Now. Who'd do what?
Giles and Anya had the shop so that they'd be unavailable during the days. But after it closed… They could be left off the list and filled in later. Xander, on the other hand, was very useful for putting up decorations and running errands – though he too had a job and that had to be taken into account. He could probably make it back for six each night.
Willow had decided that the Summers home would be a Christmas wonderland, inside and out. The inside they could handle, outside would be Xander's domain – though not his design. Dawn could look after the more exciting interior decorations with a little help… after all she was fifteen and seemed to enjoy that sort of thing, the more mundane stuff the rest of them would deal with. They just had to ensure Dawn didn’t adopt too much of Anya’s… enthusiasm.
The next important thing was the food. Christmas meant lots of good food, Willow knew that and though she wasn’t very experienced with Christmas per se… the winter holidays were a time of celebration for many. And whatever you happened to believe that also usually implied lots of frantic cooking. Except at Xander’s house where the only thing that implied cooking was a general strike in the takeaway industry. Buffy's cooking had improved lately but she'd still need a lot of help in the kitchen. Willow put herself and Tara down for that, although Tara had been quite firm about having her own things to do. Willow vaguely recalled something about a Yule celebration, but as this was to take place some days before Christmas she moved it to the back of her mind.
Mrs Summers wouldn't have to do a thing. She was still a bit weak from her operation and was spending a great deal of time in bed resting. Willow thought that if they made up the couch nice and comfy, that she could lie there and see the entire Christmas thing going on around her. They'd wait on her and pamper her like a queen, and she'd still be at the centre of all that was going on.
There. She had the beginnings of the plan down. She knew the criteria, she knew the deadline. But it was just the beginning… but not the flesh and bones. The next step was to figure out the precise tasks required and then assign them and set it all out in a logical fashion. A chart. She'd make a chart which let you know what needed to be done and when, and who was supposed to be doing it. They'd tick off boxes as the tasks were completed so that the overall progress could be measured. There also had to be personal schedules. Little charts for each person so they'd know what they were supposed to be doing and where they were supposed to be. This could all be linked back to a master chart with spaces for each task and each person so that you could tell at a glance what was going on.
And colours. It had to be colourful. And coordinated in that colour. Hmmm. Thoughts of different coloured papers began to float through her mind. Project colours were important for team identity. How much would some coloured A4 be?
She fired up her laptop, opened up a spreadsheet program and got to work. When Tara arrived back some hours later, fresh from one of her mysterious 'shopping trips’, which seemed to take forever and were becoming more frequent of late, she found Willow hard at it.
“Tara, I've put you down for two cooking sessions, on these two days. You see the orange blocks? My red and your yellow. You and me both together. Isn't that great? Getting all domestic and kitchenny! We don’t get kitchenny often enough. I think the cafeteria food spoils us…” The overwhelming silence she heard…or rather didn’t cause her to look up from the screen.
Tara looked stricken.
Probably not about the cafeteria degrading their domestic skills though. Actually there was that Banoffi pie that Tara really liked. Willow was a bit taken aback though. “Oookay. I can see that the cooking thing may not be such a good idea. I could put you down for cleaning up if you'd rather?” Though that might mean shifting Xander into the culinary role… good idea? No.
Tara frowned. “Willow, have you forgotten? That day, that's Yule! We were going to celebrate a proper Yule. You promised that would be okay with all the other planning.”
It was Willow's turn to look stricken. “I'm so sorry. I remembered, but then I forgot again. It went out of my head entirely.” Tara looked a little brighter, but not much.
“Look.” Willow gestured to her laptop and changed a few things, watching the reordered tasks drop through the sheets, pleased that it had withstood it’s first test. A successful spreadsheet it was like… well something that was very, very pleasing. “I'm putting Xand… no… Buffy and Dawn down for that time. See, all done! We'll have the whole night.”
“And the morning.” Tara added. “We'll need to get some sleep afterwards.”
“Sleep?” Willow joked. “What's that?” It was a joke, but then she realised that in fact there was a whole period on the 24th where she had not allowed for more than 3 hours sleep. For anyone. Nobody was going to be fit for holiday high jinks with just three hours sleep.
“We'll be staying up all night and I know that we'll both need some sleep.”
Particularly since we're supposed to be doing a shopping trip that afternoon, thought Willow to herself as she got back to her charts and allowed Tara to squirrel away the mysterious things from her bag into her closet without peeking. She noticed though that the printed draft of her chart had a woefully blank spot in the middle, and she moved quickly to fill it with a different coloured pen.
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“Spike, what was Christmas like? When you were my age, I mean.” Dawn asked as she made herself comfortable. Comfortable as you could be in a musty old crypt with a vampire for company when it was already dark outside. But it was kinda cool in here and the bones were definitely way cool. But part of that was also the thrill of being where she shouldn't be. At least where big ‘I'm the Slayer listen to me’ sister thought that she shouldn't be. This was just the second time and she thought that Spike was almost as surprised that she came back for more as he had been when she first turned up. That was kinda cool too. Shocking the vampire. Probably not much did.
Spike snorted. “I was never your age.”
“You had to be once upon a time. What was it like?” Dawn insisted. That only made sense. Okay he had stopped aging when he died but he was way older than her… ‘old’ even. And English. But not stuffy like Buffy's watcher.
“Ah. A story. You want me to tell you another story.” Spike settled back in his chair and lit up a smoke not fearing to blow it in her direction. If secondary smoking was the biggest danger the kid faced in this town then she would be doing pretty damn well. Time was I might have been one of those dangers.
“I want a true story.” Dawn demanded, knowing that Spike had loved telling her his little story despite what he sometimes said. Then coughed. Smoking was just so… uncool. It was about the only thing about him that wasn't cool though. Everyone had their little faults. Some, like Buffy, more than others.
Spike blew a few smoke rings, showing off now, and thought about it. “Why not?” He could tell the kid the sort of tale she loved to hear. Topical. “Ok, when I was a boy I lived in a big country estate house with my father.” Course actually it was a London townhouse and I was hardly ever there and when I was there the old man was off on one of his bloody business trips.
Dawn looked puzzled. “What about your mother?”
Spike frowned. “She died when I was small, I don't really remember her.” Which was bollocks. I remember how soft her hair was, and how she would sing to me and read me stories. She had a smell like lavender and roses. But am I going to tell the kid that she was about as interested in me as my father was? She thinks I'm cool.
And I am.
“I'm sorry.” Dawn understood his loss, she had been so afraid of losing her mother for a while there, but Mom had pulled through and now everything was all right again now. For a while she had been afraid, that last Christmas would have been… well the last. But Buffy had been right. Mom was fine. A little tired but getting better everyday.
“Don't be. It was common enough in those days.” Happy days. Back then no one cared if a family turned up dead in their house. Damn sight easier to feed in those conditions. “Anyhow, at Christmas the dining hall and parlour were decorated with ivy and holly. None of your tacky plastic tinsel and shiny mass-produced ornaments. Real greenery and little carved wooden figures hung everywhere.” Spike closed his eyes as if he were remembering the scene instead of just visualising every English Christmas movie he had ever bothered to watch. What he was actually remembering was that at the boarding school they put all the boys who stayed over Christmas at one table in the big empty dining hall. The table might have a sprig of holly or two on it but it was pretty much the same as it was all year round.
“Wow!” Dawn exclaimed, tucking the idea away for their own Christmas decorations. “It must have been a lot of work for you and your dad.”
Spike smiled at the naivety. “We didn't do it, we had servants for that. A butler and a housekeeper, upstairs maids and downstairs maids, cooks, gardeners and grounds men.” Spike struggled to think of a few more for the list but came up with a blank. You only needed grounds men if you had grounds and a small garden did not grounds make. There was just old Johns who looked after the townhouse. He was a good enough bloke. Didn't steal from the family, happy with the pay and never caused trouble when later I came home tipsy from a social event. He had done a little cooking for me when I was there, hadn't he? Spike wondered if his memory was playing tricks. Nah I was usually sent to eat at the Inn down the road. Still might as well play to stereotype.
“Servants? Your dad must have been pretty rich then.” Dawn was surprised. She never thought of Spike coming from a wealthy family.
“Yeah, but I never really thought about it.” Actually, he thought, I hated it. Back when I was little we were just a typical lower middle class family, though at least we were a family. When the old bastard made his money in the railways he started to act like a born toff. They laughed at us but he never noticed. I didn't notice them laughing at me until much later. It's amazing what you blind yourself to when trying to fit in. Still it made me what I was when Dru killed me – angry enough to be the bloke I am today.
“Did you have a tree?” The most important part of Christmas for Dawn was decorating the tree with her Mom and Buffy.
“Sure, it was a big pine tree that was grown on the estate.” Spike tried to remember what some of the other boys at school told him about their trees. “We decorated it with paper chains and hung wooden ornaments and sweets from the branches. We also hung oranges and sugar plums on Christmas Eve and we'd eat them Christmas day. All the presents were wrapped in cloth or paper and piled underneath.” At the school there had been a 'tree'. It was several pine branches tied together in what passed for woodwork. There were paper chains but nothing else. For a ‘good’ school it was a sodding pit.
Oranges and sugar plums reminded Dawn about food. A thought that was rarely far from the mind of a growing girl. “What did you do for Christmas dinner?”
Spike described a scene from an old movie he'd seen on TV once. “We had it in the dining hall where the tables were arranged in a big horseshoe shape. All the servants and all the tenants of the estate were invited. There was a great goose, which my father carved. We had several smaller geese as well so that everyone would get some, but the big goose was special – it was the only one he carved. There were roasted potatoes, pumpkin, marrow, turnip, peas, beans, chestnut stuffing and gravy. Plum pudding for desert and lots of rum punch to wash it down with.” Really… well there were slices of chicken and the usual three vegetables. Of course at Christmas there was always a spotted dick with custard and treacle, but it all tasted the same after a while.
Dawn sighed. Images of this wonderful scene filled her head. “I wish I could have lived back then.”
“No. No you don't Nibblet.” That was the truth. She wouldn't have lasted five minutes back then. If disease, poverty or overbearing parents hadn't got her then something nasty would… something like me. “Life was hard and times were harder. We never lacked for food or a roof over our heads but there were many who did. 'You're lucky to live here and now.” Yeah. The kid doesn't know how good she has it.
He couldn't help thinking that was a good thing though – that she didn’t have to know what things had really been like. Which was why he had gilded the lily a bit. Well, a lot really. But it was the sort of Christmas he would have had, if reality hadn't intervened and he had been allowed to live inside his childish fantasies.
Maybe her Christmas fantasies would come true.
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To be continued...
(and edited to correct the spelling of my name by Kerry who should be able to get it right by now...)
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She's my always
[This message has been edited by Katharyn (edited December 16, 2001).]