Disclaimer: Well, I still don't own 'em, but I bet you can guess what's at the top of my Christmas list.
This was my contribution for this year's Holiday Fan Fiction Project, and there are many people to thank for this story: Lindy and Jen for beta'ing, Kielle being nice and asking me to write this, and Andraste (who did a wonderful, wonderful job on HFFP in the face of difficulty) for being nice and saying that she would like to have it.
Archive: Want +Ask =Take
Continuity: I don't need no stinkin' continuity! ::pause:: I guess, written pre-this year's Christmas ep, and it can fit in with my other stories, but there should be no problems at all reading it all by it's lonesome.
*
The air is filled with dancing silver.
There's so much light reflecting off of the snow that the lights in her office aren't even on. The natural light is reflecting off of the ornaments and streamers she's strung from the ceiling in a much different way than the office lights do.
She's standing by the window, eating a red and purple candy cane as she leafs through file folders.
"I think that I'm going to go for a walk," I say, sitting on the edge of her desk.
"Hi," she says as she glances towards me. "I didn't hear you come in. What's up?"
"Oh," I say, crossing my arms. "Well, I was just wandering around and thought that I'd come see you."
"And tell me that you're going for a walk?"
I pause. "Yes."
"Okay then. Have fun." She turns back to her files, and crunches the end of the candy cane a little.
Okay, either one of us isn't all that good at hints, or I'm being blown off.
And now I have to go outside for no reason. I stand up and smooth the bottom of my coat down. I'm almost at the door when she calls my name.
"Sam?" She says.
"Yes?" I ask as I turn around quickly.
"You have a staff meeting with the President in about ten minutes."
"Oh."
I start to walk again, but stop at the door.
"Margaret?"
"Yeah?"
"What do you want for Christmas?"
She looks up in surprise, her eyes meeting mine. "World peace," she says after a short pause, and returns to her files.
I wander towards the front doors, stopping at the Christmas tree in the main hall. It's covered with candle lights, flickering in not-quite-tandem. It gives the impression that there are elves in the tree, amongst the wooden ornaments and coloured ribbons, waving to everyone as the go along their way.
The lobby rings with jumbled sounds, and I push out through the doors, sidestepping the mistletoe hanging in the foyer.
It's cold outside. I should have brought a hat. Or mitts. Mitts would have been good. Or a scarf. Or a warmer coat, one of those ones that's supposed to be good down until minus twenty.
I stop by the frozen fountain, my feet crunching in the snow. My hands are clenched in my pockets, buried amongst who-knows what I have in there. I'm watching my breath float up into the wide blue sky when a sharp, cold, shock smacks into the back of my head.
My hand goes up to my head automatically as I spin around. There's laughter coming from behind me, and all of a sudden, my face is cold and I can't see.
I raise my hands to my face, wipe away the snow from my eyes just in time to see another white ball hurtling towards me. I hit the ground, shaking my head as I do so to try and dislodge the rest of the snow.
From what I assume is the direction the snowballs were coming from, I hear laughter again. There's a patch of red over there, showing up against the snow like a bonfire.
There's only one person with hair like that.
I gather a bunch of snow together and lob it at Margaret as I scramble upright.
I quit Little League for a reason. It misses by a mile, and she doesn't even move. She just laughs harder, leans her hands on her knees. Scooping up another pile and smashing it into two, I throw again, and again, and her laughter's cut off as they smack into her face, one after the other.
"Oops," I say, and now I'm the one laughing.
She stands upright, wipes the snow from her face in one clean swipe. Most of it falls to the ground, or lies invisible against her white jacket, but some of it catches in her hair, shining brightly. Her breath comes up in one great plume, and she looks dead at me. "You're dead, Seaborne," she says with what I hope is a mock snarl.
I don't stick around to find out.
I can hear her behind me, feet crunching in the snow. I head towards the back of the building, rounding the corner. The wind must have been different there when it was snowing, because there's a rather high drift, and I catch my foot on something at the top of it. I tumble down, the snow cushioning the fall, and lie there as the sky spins around me.
There's the barest of seconds, and I see Margaret standing at the top of the bank, grinning widely. That smile is bright and fierce and telling. She leaps off the top, her coat tails flying wide, white against the bright, bright blue horizon.
She lands neatly beside me in a crouch, leaning forward to take some of the impact on her gloved hands. Snow flies up around us, and swing my arm around with the handful of powder I've gathered up. I catch her as she's rising, dump the snow all over her head and face. She backs off, sputtering, laughing.
Something in her eyes doesn't bode well for me.
She holds up her hands mockingly. I just look at her, and she raises an eyebrow, bends over and shakes as much of the powder out of her hair as possible. I keep my distance, but when she doesn't do anything, I drop the snowball that I'm holding.
The second I do it, I know I've made a mistake. Her eyes are glinting. They're all glinty.
I reach down quickly, trying to scoop it up again, scoop anything up, but she tackles me, knocking me backwards into the incline of the drift. Ice crystals explode up around us, glittering in the sun like arctic diamonds.
Her eyes shine bright, close, so close to mine, fringed bright with snowflakes, and her breath is warm against my skin. There's a second, an instant, a millennia, our faces frozen in time, in ice, and she kisses me. There's snow on my lips, or on hers, pinpricks of ice melting rapidly in the heat. She tastes like fruit punch and candy canes.
Then cold hits me like a freight train, down my back. She's up and over the drift in a second, leaving me to sputter to my feet, trying to scoop the snow out of the back of my neck.
She pokes her head around the corner. I can barely see her over the drift. "You're probably late for your staff meeting," she says.
I start to check my watch, then remember that I'm not wearing one.
"Take my word on this one. You're late," she says.
"Damn."
I start to head back around to the main doors, but her voice stops me.
"It would be faster to just go across the courtyard."
She's right. She's trying to avoid me getting near her so that I can get her back, but she's still right. "Thanks," I tell her, still trying to get the snow out from under my collar. I only succeed in transferring it from my neck to my back. I'm not going to let her see that I've managed to get the snow down my back.
"You dumped it down your shirt, didn't you?" She asks as I turn to go.
"Well, quite possibly. Quite probably, even." I pause a second. "I'll get you later," I say, then dash off across the courtyard, hoping to get there in reasonable time.
"Coward!" I hear her call from behind me.
Life is good.
I'm pretty sure that the secret service agent standing in the hall gives me a dirty look when I traipse in. Maybe he was a janitor in a former life.
Or maybe he just doesn't want to walk through it when it's melted.
I squelch into Charlie's office, and unless his clock is off, I'm definitely late. Judging by the look on his face, his clock is running right on time.
"I'll let them know you're here," he says as he rises and taps on the door. "Mr. President, Sam's here."
"It's about time," I can hear the President call, even through the door. "Well, what are you waiting for? You're late enough as it is."
So I push into the oval office, and immediately become away of exactly what I must look like.
The president takes his glasses off, rubs them on a cloth, and puts them back on. He peers at me carefully, then shakes his head.
"I'm not even going to ask," Leo says.
"I was outside," I volunteer.
"Well, we can see that," Toby says, his perpetual frown deepening. "It does, however, leaves us with several important questions, such as why you were out there, and why, exactly, you let Frosty the snowman beat you up."
A chunk of snow chooses that moment to dislodge itself from my hair and slide down my face.
"Sam," the president says. "Find a place on the carpet where you won't drip on anything expensive or essential to the state. You've taken up enough of our time as it is."
"Yes Sir."
*
Damn near everyone from outside the White House I've ever talked to thinks that the shiny boxes under our Christmas trees are empty. Just boxes wrapped in pretty paper.
I used to think the exact same thing.
They're secret Santa gifts, you know. They're collected from the staff in mid-November, wrapped up, and put in storage until the trees go up. Christmas morning, they're taken down to shelters around the city and distributed to the children.
It's a nice touch.
"It's nice this year, isn't it" A voice asks me.
I turn, smile at Margaret where she stands beside me with her white pea coat folded over her arm. Her hair is waving softly, from drying in the air after the snow. "Yeah," I say.
"I like the angel they used."
She doesn't say anything else, and nether do I, but we stand there in the flickering light, the candle lights casting slight shadows over our faces.
"So ..." I say finally.
"So."
"I should probably get going."
"Yeah, me too."
She slides her jacket on, pulling it tight around her shoulders, brushing her hair out from under the collar. "You done your Christmas shopping?" She asks.
"Almost," I say.
"That's good." She pauses. "Who do you have left?"
"My grandmother on my mom's side, a third cousin who I'm close to. And you."
"Oh. What did you get Toby?"
"Toby's Jewish. He doesn't celebrate Christmas."
"I know. What did you get him for Hanukkah, then?"
"A new bouncy ball," I say with a what I half suspect is a smirk. "It has a yellow happy face, and it says 'Be Happy' in sparkly pink letters."
"Where'd you get it?" She asks.
"San Fransisco. The store. Not the city."
She looks at me oddly, then shakes her head. "What's the real present, for after he smiles politely and issues a nicely crafted burn?"
"A set of monographed pens."
"That sounds very ... useful."
"Hey, they're nice ones. The ink lays on paper like liquid silk."
She just looks at me.
"It's a writer thing," I say.
She shrugs, glances down at the presents beneath the tree. "What are you going to get me?" She asks, grinning impishly.
"I can't tell you. Then it wouldn't be a surprise."
"You just don't know, do you?"
"Well, I was planning on getting you peace on earth, but it was over
my budget, so you're just going to have to wait and find out."
"I'd settle for gold, frankensense and myrr."
"I'll have to look into that."
She laughs a little, a silvery sound, looks at the Christmas tree. She glances over at me again, and her eyes are distracted. "It doesn't have to be expensive, you know."
"I know. I just like Christmas, and giving presents is kind of a part of it."
She pauses. "You don't, do you?"
"What, like Christmas?"
"No, know what I'm talking about."
"I guess not."
She sighs a little bit, but she's smiling. "World peace. It doesn't have to be expensive."
"Well, I guess that that would depend upon how you went about it." Which leads me to thinking how, exactly, one would go about it. "You know, I'm thinking that no matter what you did, it would still run you a fair big of cash."
She smiles at me, shakes her head. "I don't know. I think we all go through life burning. We can bring comfort or hope, but we can cause as much pain and destruction. It's like the more we live, the brighter our flames. You don't play with fire, do you? At the very least, we tell people not to play with it. We put people out so casually, when we really don't shine any brighter for it. All you have to do is to be true to yourself, and you'll cast light for miles." She glances down at her boots, at their scuffed toes and tightened laces. "I know how corny this sounds, I really do, but I think that everyone who's burning bright helps light the others up too. So one person makes a difference in the long run. One person makes a difference in the now." She reaches out a hand to the tree, runs her fingers along the needles. "This is a great place for that. It's full up to the brim of people trying to make a difference. So for Christmas, Sam, just try and keep on burning bright for me."
She drops her eyes again, looks up at the angle on top of the tree. I reach out a hand, brush her hair back from her face. She looks over at me again through lowered lids, her glowing eyes snapping back to here. I reluctantly take my hand back, and I know I'm smiling. She smiles at me, her teeth flashing white, and straightens her shoulders.
"Come on," she says, laying a hand on my arm.
She waves at Stuart, the secret service agent from Manchester, calls out good night. Our footsteps punch dimly through the fading noises of the day as we pass through the foyer. The dark winter air jolts through me, and I can feel myself shiver. Margaret lays a hand on the railing as we head down the stairs, then stops suddenly.
"What?" I ask her as I glance back up the stairs at her.
She's looking back at the doors, her head turned to the side as if looking at something. Even just standing there, she's afire, her hair bright against the night.
"Tsk tsk, Sam," she says.
"What?" I say again.
"You know there's mistletoe hanging in the foyer."
Damn. There is too.
"Yes."
"You know that it's bad luck to walk under it with someone and not kiss them?"
"Actually, I hadn't heard that one."
"Well, it is."
I grin, and she takes an even step down the stairs.
"You know, the longer you wait, the more bad luck it's supposed to bring."
"So right now, there's all this bad luck adding up around us."
"Yeah."
"By now, there's probably enough added up to start spilling out around us."
She kisses me lightly, briefly, pulls her head back.
"We wouldn't want all that bad luck to get left all over the White House, would we?" I say.
She grins.
"Well, we wouldn't."
She leans forward, her nose touching mine.
"No, we wouldn't," she says.