Reflections

Hello again everyone! I'm so sorry for the random disappearance lately – my life is in a bit of chaos, but I'm surviving! I hope you find this one shot enjoyable, and I also hope you all have a very Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it, of course). Nonetheless, whatever holiday you celebrate, whether all or none at all, I wish you all a great rest of the 2014 year! See you all next year!

*This one shot takes place within an AU series about the Holmes family. For a complete list of the stories currently within the arc, feel free to visit my profile! Regardless, I tried my best to write this particular story as casual reader friendly as possible*

"So what does your family do for Christmas, Holmes?"

Christopher Holmes didn't even bother to look up from his lunch at the question; he was, after all, expecting it to come up at some point in the day. Everyone suddenly quieted and every eye fell on him to wait for his answer.

"We do the tradition sort of things, I suppose," Chris finally said after a few seconds.

"What's traditional for a family like yours?" Larry asked with a chuckle, which almost made Chris sigh in exasperation. Every year it was the same question and every year, it was the same damn answer. Of course it was no secret to the entire publishing house about how he was married to a genius and had two sons that had followed in their mother's footsteps. But why his family's way of doing Christmas was of any consequence to those that he worked with was beyond him, but thankfully, Larry moved on before waiting for a reply. Talk went around the table of different Christmas traditions, ranging from some of the men dressing up as Father Christmas for their children to families singing carols and so on and so forth.

And Chris kept his silence the entire conversation. In truth, it was more because he was reflecting back on his own history with Christmas, which seemed rather normal and identical to the ones he heard around the table. But all of that changed the first Christmas that he was married to his wife, Linda. That first year of marriage was full of challenges, compromises and more fights than he had ever had with another human being, and the topic of Christmas was, of course, no different.

Perhaps in retrospect, he should've realized that they both celebrated the holiday in different ways; after all, their backgrounds were polar opposites. But during that first Christmas, he found himself agreeing to whatever Linda suggested and wanted over what he thought should happen. Happy wife, happy life is what other married men around him told him at the time and being only nineteen years old, he didn't really have room to argue with that theory.

And over the next twenty years, with Linda's continuing influence, he had slowly forgotten what Christmas was like before her, Mycroft and Sherlock came along.

Lunch passed without further probing from curious coworkers and the rest of the workday seemed to pass slower than normal. When the time came to head home, Chris almost raced out of the office to avoid further questions. How he managed to get through the mass of traffic that filled the streets of Cambridge in decent time, he hadn't a clue, but before he knew it, he was walking through the front door of the house and Redbeard raced to greet him, his tail furiously wagging.

"Oi, be careful where you swing that," Chris said as he pet Redbeard's head. Following the dog into the sitting room, he smiled at the sight of Linda curled up and asleep in his chair. She stirred when he leaned over her to kiss her forehead and opened her eyes.

"Hi," she murmured sleepily.

"Sorry I missed dinner."

"It's all right." She sat up and stretched, massaging her neck with one hand. "I figured you would be late, with Christmas being tomorrow. I put aside a plate for you, it's in the fridge. But Sherlock has been waiting for you, so you might want to get to him before you eat."

Chris smiled. "I'll go right up, then."

Redbeard led the way upstairs and Chris walked into the open bedroom to see Sherlock leaning over his desk with a magnifying glass studying a small pile of snow in a petri dish.

"What have we here?" Chris walked up beside the desk.

"I'm trying to see how many designs of snowflakes are in this sample I took from the yard."

"Ah." Chris stepped back and took a seat on the bed. "That could take a while."

"I have time."

Chris chuckled. "You know, I thought there was an old saying that no two snowflakes are alike."

"Water molecules are complex in their design and function. It's very possible that an Oxygen-16 molecule normally found in a molecule of water could instead be an Oxygen-18, which has a 30 percent greater density than that of natural water, thus leading to different designs. There are other factors that influence that, of course –exceptions such as snowflakes with only a handful of molecules versus a great many- but," Sherlock looked up to his father, "I won't bore you with that. Are you ready to read?"

"I am." Chris moved to let the little boy –and Redbeard- climb into bed, both of them settling down and getting comfortable. "Now, let's see, what shall we read this Christmas Eve night?" Chris moved to the bookshelf. "How about something simple?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "I still think that The Grinch was wronged by those ridiculous Whos and that he was fully within his rights to siege their village."

"Of course he was," Chris said with a soft chuckle. "All right, then, something different – ah." He pulled a small, thin book from between two massive encyclopedias. "A Christmas Carol. I think you're old enough for this." He took a seat and opened the book to the first page, waiting for Sherlock's nod to begin. "Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that…"

"And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us Everyone!" Chris looked up and was surprised to see that Sherlock was wide-awake, obviously quite taken with what he had heard. Chris could tell that a million questions were racing through that nine-year-old mind and he set the book aside to patiently wait for the first one to drop. The discussion with The Grinch took at least an hour last year, complete with an entire dissection of their supposedly absent government; Chris could only guess that this year's would take twice as long.

Sherlock opened his mouth and then: "Scrooge sounds like Mycroft."

Chris somehow managed to hold back a snort of laughter at the simple, yet serious, statement. "I highly doubt that your brother is destined to become an old miser who hates Christmas."

"He's already halfway there."

"Be that as it may, he still isn't Scrooge. And I'll pray that he doesn't become that way."

"Pray until you're blue in the face," Sherlock said with a shrug. "Won't make a difference." He yawned and Chris stood to his feet to further tuck the duvet.

"Sounds like you need to get some sleep."

"I'm not tired, my brain just needed some oxygen." Sherlock yawned again. "But I have some thoughts about this."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow night after we get back from Nana's."

Sherlock groaned. "Oh, God. Can't we call in sick? Or say that the train station exploded? What about just sending them all a fruitcake?"

"Seeing your family isn't a job, we don't take the train and no." Chris gently pet Sherlock's head. "Good night, son."

"Night, Dad," Sherlock grumbled, turning over to hug Redbeard. Chris shut off the light and left the room to walk down the hall to the master bedroom, where Linda was already in bed, looking through the family photo album and smiling.

"You haven't gotten tired of looking through that old thing yet?" Chris asked as he sat next to her.

"It's the only memory I have of Mike actually enjoying Christmas." She sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I don't know what I did, but I swear he gets more and more vocal about his hatred for it every year."

"It's just a phase, he'll grow out of it." He kissed her cheek and they quietly looked through the album together for a few minutes.

"You know," Linda said, looking up from the album to him. "I saw Teresa in the store today – you know, from down the road- and she was telling me about what she and her husband are doing for their daughters for Christmas. I mean, it all sounded very nice and it's nothing like what we did for the boys. It just got me to thinking: do you ever wish that our Christmases as a family were more…I don't know, normal?" She stared at him as he paused to think.

"You know, there was a time where I wished that I could've played Father Christmas for the boys like Rudy did for me when I was young. I used to feel some sadness when I saw families together that weren't fighting over simple things such as Christmas music and how the lights on the tree were hanging at too oblique of an angle. For the longest time, I wondered what it was like to have a Christmas like that - a normal Christmas."

Linda looked to her lap, but he brought her gaze back up to meet his.

"But all of that disappointment was short-lived," he said with a gentle smile. "I would take Sherlock's theories over the lack of government in Whoville, Mycroft's crows about how Christmas music causes his ears to bleed and you obsessing over the Christmas lights over everything else. So what if we never told the boys about Father Christmas and if we can't sing to save our lives? I don't need a 'normal' Christmas –whatever that means; as long as I have you and the boys, I have Christmas. And that's all that matters to me."

She smiled and leaned to kiss him. "We do have some unique moments during Christmas, don't we," she asked with a smile.

"And that's what makes it ours," he murmured as he kissed her again. "The best kind of Christmas by far is a Holmes family Christmas."