2019 Advent Challenge

It was the morning of the 4th of December, and in the Slayers Organisation HQ, everything lay still and quiet. Then, quite suddenly, a door on the upper landing opened and Sandra came stumbling down the stairs, looking bedraggled and tired. Making her way into the kitchen, she found Lewis there, leaning against the counter and absent-mindedly stirring milk into a cup of tea.

'We have a problem,' she announced.

'Uhm, what?' he managed. It was 8AM, which for him, was a perfectly normal time to be awake. Sandra would have called it an ungodly time to be doing anything.

'It's been snowing all night,' she said, 'and now I have a bad feeling that we can't get outside. Have you even looked out the window today?'

Lewis turned to the kitchen window, which was covered by a green blind. Pulling the blind up, he blinked in surprise when it revealed nothing but a clean plane of white outside the glass. There was a very thin strip at the top of the window through which he could see the sky, but that was all.

'What's going on?' he said. 'It never snows here. At least not in December.'

'I have no idea, but if it keeps up like this, then every single one of us is going to be stuck here over Christmas.'

Lewis thought back to the week before, when he, Sam and Truman had ventured out to the market on a 'secret' shopping trip to buy presents for each other and Sandra. He was now unspeakably grateful that they'd decided to go early, just in case they ended up not being able to leave the building anytime soon.

'Well,' he said, taking a sip of his tea, 'there's nothing we can do about it. We'll just have to hope it melts before Christmas, and if it doesn't... we'll be staying here, I guess.'

Sandra didn't look impressed. 'Sam and Truman were both planning to visit family over the holidays. They're not going to be happy about this. I should have paid more attention to the weather forecast... I knew it was supposed to snow last night, but I never realised it would get... quite this bad.'

'It's not your fault it snowed. Sam and Truman will understand. ...In fact, Sam will probably find this fun, for some reason.'

Sandra considered this.

'...Yes, I think she will, actually.'

---

That night, it kept snowing.

'It's not letting up,' Sam muttered, pulling back a curtain to observe the wall of white blocking up the window. Lewis, who was sitting on the threadbare sofa with a cup of tea and pretending to read a newspaper, glanced up briefly.

'Well, Sandra did say it would probably snow all night,' he said. 'It might not stop for ages.'

At that precise moment, Sandra came hurrying down the stairs. 'We have a problem,' she announced, and Lewis was struck by a wave of deja vu.

'What now?' said Sam.

'The power's gone out.'

Sam's face split into a wide grin. 'We don't have any power right now? At all?' She gazed around, noticing for the first time that the kitchen light had gone off. She hadn't seen the lights go off in the living-room since there were no lights here, or at least no electric ones – the room was softly lit by a few strategically-placed candles. The electric bulb had broken a few weeks ago and somehow, Sandra hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet.

'Don't make it sound like a good thing,' said Sandra darkly. 'I can't get any work done now – my laptop wasn't charged.'

Sam clearly could not care less about Sandra's work. 'I'm gonna go tell Truman,' she said, darting off upstairs to find him. Nobody bothered to tell her that Truman probably already knew the power was out, since he'd been in his room blasting music until a few minutes ago.

Sandra gazed around despairingly for a moment, then collapsed onto the sofa, resting her head in her hands.

Lewis slowly placed his empty teacup on the coffee table and tossed his newspaper aside. 'So, er... what are we going to do now?'

She lifted her head. 'Nothing, I suppose,' she said. 'I can't get anything done until the power comes back on, and we can't leave this house either... we can't do much except wait.'

Lewis grunted in acknowledgement and said nothing else. The atmosphere wasn't exactly awkward; he and Sandra had known each other long enough to have moved past little things like that. But it was strange to be sitting here in near-total darkness without Sandra's laptop, or Sam, or Truman to act as a buffer. He had no idea what to talk about.

---

'Er, we bought Christmas presents,' he said a few minutes later. 'Me, Sam and Truman. We went out the other day and bought stuff for each other, and for you...'

Sandra whipped around to stare at him, a look of wide-eyed surprise and possibly horror on her face.

'Oh, I haven't bought anything for any of you yet. I was planning to wait until later. Of course, I didn't expect this to happen.'

Lewis shrugged. 'I don't mind getting a late Christmas present.'

'Still, I should have anticipated this. It's a bit rude to get presents on Christmas Day and not be able to give anything back.'

'Nobody's going to hold it against you,' he said. 'Like I said earlier, it's not your fault it started snowing. And if we do get stuck here over Christmas... then we'll just make the most of it.'

She stared at him for a moment longer, then broke eye contact and turned away with a small sigh.

Lewis wasn't sure what possessed him to say what he said next. 'You know... I might be wrong about this... but it seems like you don't enjoy Christmas very much.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'What makes you think that?'

'Uhm, all of the obvious things? Like I said, maybe I'm wrong. But it just seems like you don't care about any of this.'

'I don't hate Christmas,' Sandra replied, 'and I don't want anyone to think that I do. It's just that... this time of year brings back a lot of memories... and not all of them are pleasant. It was around Christmas time that Stuart and I...' She trailed off, and Lewis felt his pulse quicken at the mention of Stuart's name.

He was very familiar with this particular secret of Sandra's; she had confided in him about her past relationship with the young vampire over a year ago. She had never gone into detail, but Lewis was intelligent enough to read between the lines and figure out exactly what had made that part of her life such an unhappy one.

'It's been a long time, I know,' Sandra continued before he had a chance to say anything. 'I shouldn't still be so affected by it. I was seventeen, for God's sake. And yet, even now...'

'...It's perfectly understandable,' Lewis said. His voice, invariably dropping to a hoarse rasp as it always did when he was tired, sounded too loud in the silence of the night. 'Nobody would expect you to have completely gotten over it.'

'I love Christmas. I honestly do. But every time it comes around, I can't help thinking back to those days, almost twenty years ago, and I don't know if I'll ever stop remembering. It's ridiculous that--'

'Sandra,' he said, cutting her off mid-tirade, 'you don't need to explain anything. You don't need to... to justify anything.'

She sniffed. He couldn't tell whether it was from emotion or the lingering remnants of the cold she'd caught last week.

'I just wish I could enjoy Christmas the way you, Sam and Truman do,' she said a little thickly. 'Really enjoy it, without remembering things I shouldn't.'

'Make new memories,' he suggested. 'Learn to associate Christmas with something other than... him.'

'It's a lot easier said than done, Lewis.'

'I know it won't be easy. It'll probably take a long time. But, because of the snow, we're probably going to be celebrating Christmas together this year... so we can stay with you and help you. You won't have time to think about anything else with Sam dragging us all into the festivities.'

Despite having worked together for nearly a decade, the four of them had actually never spent Christmas together. Lewis usually stayed with his mother up in Ireland; Sam and Truman both left to visit friends and family before spending the rest of the holidays together. And Sandra? He was pretty sure she just stayed at the HQ, trying to get more work done. She had a family, but they lived in America, and she had never travelled there to spend Christmas with them.

He had never really thought about it before... but now, the idea of her spending the festive season alone didn't sit well with him at all.

'Yes, well...' she said. 'I suppose it will be nice to have company for once. I have no idea how we're going to get all the food, since we're stuck here... but I'm sure Sam and Truman will figure something out if we don't.'

Lewis smiled faintly, and found the courage to wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his side. Later, he'd use the excuse that it was cold and they needed to share warmth, but that wasn't the real reason and they both knew it. 'We'll all stay here and enjoy the holidays together, just the four of us.'

Somehow, he had a feeling that it was going to be one of the best Christmases they'd ever had.