Written for Tales of Secret Santa 2015! A gift for rplethora on tumblr. I hope you like it!

Yuri sat on a low wall and quietly hummed Feliz Navidad . It had been in a constant loop in his brain ever since hearing it in a store at least three hours prior, which was enough to make him hate the entire concept of Spanish. Maybe if the song had more than four distinct lines - one of which he didn't even understand - it would be more tolerable, but as it was, he was ready to beat the songwriter over the head with a macarena.

Across the street, children poured out of the school. They were all puffed up with winter coats in a medley of colours, which made it hard to pick out individual kids from the mass. Some came out carrying paper art projects with Santa's face and others were loaded down with handfuls of little gifts from friends, and it seemed that all of them were shouting and laughing as they ran toward their parents' cars.

Yuri could understand their enthusiasm; he'd been pretty happy himself half an hour ago when he left his high school for winter break. He hadn't left with art projects or spent half the day at a concert watching five year olds try to sing, which was just another way that elementary school was so much more fun than high school. The worst part was that Estelle and Flynn had actually chastised him for not paying attention in math class. Why were his friends such nerds ?

He was distracted from his thoughts of just how many hours who could spend playing video games before school started up again when he spotted the bright green child he was waiting for. The child, whose hood was pulled up and cut off his vision like a horse in blinders, obliviously strolled away from the school. Yuri cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered, "Karol! Hey!"

The little green jacket flailed around as the boy sought the source of the sound, and finally the small opening for his face turned to Yuri waving from across the road. Karol waved in return, grabbed the straps of his back and ran across the road.

"Hi, Yuri! What are you doing here?"

Yuri slid off the wall and patted the slippery hood of Karol's jacket. "What, I can't walk my little bro home? Where's your Christmas spirit?" Karol wasn't actually his brother, but they'd lived in the same foster home for a few years now, so they may as well be as far as they were concerned.

"It's not a problem! Where's Flynn and Estelle?" Karol stomped on sheets of ice that intruded onto the sidewalk from the browning snow drifts.

"They already went home. Careful!" Karol had stomped on a thick sheet of ice and slipped forward, nearly crashing to the ground. He was so bundled up that it probably wouldn't have hurt, but Yuri caught him anyway. "How was school?"

"It was great!" For the next few minutes, Karol happily babbled about the various festivities his grade three class had participated in. Yuri gathered that there were some snowman-themed crafts stuffed into his backpack. It would be better to be eight, Yuri thought, because then you could play games and do crafts on the last day before vacation and not do stupid algebra like when you were seventeen.

Halfway home, they stood at a corner and waited for the light to change. Karol had run out of stories about school and was now kicking a pile of snow and slowly chipping it away. Yuri shoved his hands in his pockets and watched cars rush by. Softly, causing mist to form from his breath, he whispered, "Feliz Navidad…. Feliz Navidad… Feliz Navidad, blah blah blah -"

"Hey, Yuri?"

"Hm?"

The light changed and they stepped onto the street. Karol's face was taut with concentration as he stared at the asphalt. "It's just… I've been thinking. And… Santa is… not real, right?"

Yuri looked down at him. "What makes you say that?"

"It doesn't make sense!" On the other sidewalk now, he threw out his arms. "How can one man go to every house in the world and deliver presents? And come on, flying reindeer? It's silly."

Yuri slapped his hand over Karol's mouth. "Shhh, keep your voice down. You don't want the fat man to hear you, do you?"

Karol grabbed Yuri's wrist and pushed his hand away. "Come on, Yuri, I'm old enough to have figured it out. Don't tell me you still believe in him."

"Sure I do." Yuri crossed his arms stubbornly. "Who else is leaving coal in my socks every year?"

"You can stop playing along." He stomped down the sidewalk, kicking clumps of snow as he went.

"Santa's not going to be too happy about this…." Yuri trailed after Karol. "But I bet he'll still bring you something even if you say he doesn't exist."

"I'm not dumb, Yuri. When I hang out with you and the others, you guys all talk about Santa but I know you're just trying to fool me. You guys treat me like I'm a dumb little kid you have to pretend to believe in fairy tales for."

It must be hard being so much younger than the rest of his friend group. Karol had trouble making friends at school, so he always preferred to hang out with the group made up of Yuri's friends from high school. It was true that they all pretended to believe in Santa when Karol was around, but who wouldn't? Nobody wanted to be the one to spoil the magic.

"Hey, you know that's not true. You're part of the gang."

"The part everyone else lies to and tries to fool into believing some childish story." They had reached their house and Karol ran across the yard to reach the door, leaving a trail of deep prints in the snow.

Yuri tried to remember how old he'd been when he stopped believing in Santa. It had been younger than Karol, that was for sure, but after being identified as a 'difficult' child, he'd been shuffled around through so many living situations as a kid that there had been more than a few Christmases without an appearance by Santa. Coupled with the fact that even as a little kid he'd been, in Raven's words, 'a cynical little bastard', and it wasn't a surprise he barely remembered a time when he thought Santa was real.

Karol was different, though. He was like Flynn, who had stubbornly held onto the Santa delusion until he was almost ten. They were the kind of people who believed in goodness and light and Christmas miracles and that most people will do the right thing when it comes down to it. Yuri had always vaguely wished that he could experience that Christmas magic so many other kids grew up with, and it saddened him to think it was ending for Karol.

Yuri sighed and walked up the driveway. "...from the bottom of my heeeart…."

Raven was already halfway through his coffee when Yuri finally showed up. Considering Yuri had been the one to ask to meet up, he was a little irritated. Maybe it was his day off, but that didn't mean he had nowhere else to be! Well… ok, so he didn't actually have anywhere else to be, but Yuri didn't know that.

"Hey, kid," he said as Yuri dropped into the chair across from him. It was a Sunday afternoon and the coffee shop was filled with a low drone of conversation from the handful of patrons.

"Sorry I'm late. Hanks decided to go out so he needed me to watch Karol, so I dropped him off at Flynn's house first."

How dare Yuri have an appropriate excuse of not being willing to leave an eight-year-old home alone? "You could have brought him with ya. I like that kid. He makes this old man feel young again!" He chuckled and sipped his coffee.

"Nah, I needed to talk to you about him, actually."

"Oh?" Raven raised his eyebrows. "Nothing wrong, is there?" Raven had never meant to have a strong relationship with children. He didn't even have any siblings to be an uncle to. He'd been pretty happy with his life as a suave police officer taking ladies to his bachelor pad (which admittedly happened less often than he told others). But then a good friend on the force had to go and get himself killed. Finath had left behind a son and Raven felt compelled to take an interest in the kid. He'd thought he'd just volunteered himself to be an uncle-like figure for the son of a deceased friend, but somehow that kid's friends also got dragged into the mix and now he found himself with a collection of children that were somewhere between friends and surrogate family members.

Yuri nodded with deadly seriousness. "We have a pretty major crisis on our hands, old man." He was about to explain further when the barista called his name. "Oh, just a sec."

"What - hey! Don't leave me hangin'!"

Yuri returned a minute later with a mug that presumably contained a drink beneath the mountain of whipped cream. He took a long gulp and then licked away his frothy moustache.

"So?" Raven pressed. "What's the deal?"

Yuri set the mug down and then declared, "Karol doesn't believe in Santa."

Raven slumped and clutched his chest. "Is that it? Jesus, kid, you're going to give ol' Raven a heart attack. I thought he was dyin' of cancer or something." Straightening up, he said, "Anyway, what's the big deal? Santa is fake."

"He seemed pretty upset about it, though."

Raven drummed his fingers on his own mug. "Ah, that's too bad. I remember when I found out the truth. Broke my little heart. I was probably around nine, though."

"When Flynn was eight, he left little notes around his house for Santa to find. What a loser."

"Ha, that sounds like him." Raven took another sip of coffee. "Anyway, what do ya wanna do about it? Every stops believin' in Santa eventually."

"Not yet though. I want to convince him Santa is real. Let him have Christmas magic for at least one more year."

"Sounds like ya already have a plan."

"I do indeed."

"And ya need my help?"

"It pains me to need to ask you, but yeah."

Raven leaned forward on his knees. It was inevitable that Karol would stop believing in Santa eventually, but Raven found himself agreeing with Yuri. Maybe it was because it didn't seem too long ago that Raven met the kid for the first time as a pre-schooler and imagining that little kid outgrowing Santa made him feel old. Maybe he just wanted a kid he cared about to light up with wonder at the sight of a filled stocking again. In any case, he grinned. "So what's your plan?"

It was Christmas Eve. Raven stood on the front stoop of Yuri's house, shivering in the cold. This red jacket was nowhere near warm enough for December and if Santa was at all realistic, he'd be wearing a parka while flying at those altitudes. Another icy breeze cut through his coat and Raven sniffled; the things he did for these kids!

The door cracked open and he hurried inside. Yuri closed it silently and Raven stomped snow off his boots.

"Karol asleep?" Raven whispered.

Yuri nodded. "I'll go 'accidentally' wake him up."

Yuri tip-toed away and Raven crept to the living room. The lights on the tree had been left on, filling the otherwise dark room with a soft rainbow glow. Over the fireplace hung three stockings. The first two had the names "Yuri" and "Karol" written with puff paint; Hanks had bought them only a few years ago when he took the boys in. The third was smaller and had a picture of a bone on it, with Yuri's best attempt at legible writing to spell "Repede" in Sharpie.

Raven slipped off his boots and pressed the soles into the ash in the hearth, just for the look of the thing, and left some sooty footprints away from the fireplace after putting them back on. There was a little table between the hearth and the tree, upon which someone had left a plate with some sugar cookies, carrots, and a glass of milk. Raven was more than happy to munch on a cookie while waiting.

Before long, he heard the tell-tale shuffling of feet on the stairs. Quickly, he wiped crumbs away from his false beard and crouched by the tree while reaching into his potato sack. The steps reached the base of the stairs and then there was a long pause. Raven pulled out a wrapped gift (To Karol, From Santa , written by Judith who had the most unrecognizable handwriting) and set it under the tree.

The silence continued and he glanced over his shoulder to spot a small face peering around the doorframe. It quickly disappeared as soon as Raven looked, but not fast enough.

Carefully trying to match his voice to a more 'jolly' cadence than he was used to, Raven said, "You should be in bed, little boy."

Silence. Raven sighed. "I know you're there."

Slowly, Karol slunk out of hiding. He wore a hand-me-down sweatshirt from Yuri, with arms so long they hid his hands. He eyed Raven for a moment and then said, "Are you really Santa?"

"Why, of course I am." He held a finger up to his lips, which tickled from synthetic beard. "But shh, you're not supposed to see me."

Karol crept closer. "And you came down the chimney?"

Raven nodded and then gestured at the sooty footprints. "Sorry about the mess. I'll clean up before I go."

Karol stood a few feet away now, arms crossed and eyes glancing between Raven's costume and the sack. "How come you don't have many presents in there if you're taking stuff to every kid in the world?"

"Have you ever played Portal?"

Karol tilted his head. "Huh? You mean that video game? Yeah, I played it with Yuri and Flynn."

"It's like that, see? The bag is a portal and it opens to my workshop at the North Pole. That way I don't have to squeeze everything into one bag."

Karol eyed the bag. "Can I see the portal?"

Rave tugged the opening out of sight. "It, uh, is closed now. It only opens while I'm flying."

"With your reindeer, right?"

Raven nodded. "But you should hurry off back to bed so I can fill-"

"If I go outside, will I see your sleigh on the roof?"

"It's… invisible."

"The reindeer are invisible, too?"

"Yeah."

Karol folded his arms. "What are their names?"

Crap . He hadn't prepared for an interrogation. Certainly Raven had known the names of the reindeer at some point in his life, but it had been so long ago that he gave them any thought that his mind went blank. Think, think! There were eight of them and some of their names sounded the same. "Er… Rudolph… Vixen… Comet… Dasher… Prancer… Bombur… Kili and Fili."

Karol stamped his foot. "Those are the dwarves from The Hobbit!"

"They are not!"

"Are too!"

Raven crossed his arms. "Well, The Hobbit named them after my reindeer."

"Did not."

"Don't argue with Santa."

"You're not Santa."

"Yes I am."

"I know it's you, Raven."

Dammit . "Er… who's Raven? I'm Santa."

"I can see the elastic on your fake beard."

"Ho ho, what?" He patted the beard. "This is my real beard, of course."

Karol pointed at Raven's belly so his index finger barely escaped the long sleeves. "And your pillow is slipping."

Raven glanced down, and while he was looking, Karol snatched the hat off his head, along with the attached wig of curly white hair.

"Ha!"

"Hey!" Raven reached for the hat, but there was no point trying to salvage the situation now. Dammit, he'd have to apologize to Yuri for really screwing this up. He sighed and fell into a proper sit, stretching out his legs. "Looks like ya got me, kid."

Karol's expression of triumph faded as he looked down at the hat in his hands. He ran his fingers along the fake fur until finding a little tag saying, Made in China . Karol dropped to the ground, too, with a long sigh. "I thought I'd be really happy proving it once and for all. But… I think I was really hoping you would be real."

Raven tugged the pillow out of the red coat he'd bought on a sale at Wal-Mart and rested it on his lap. "Sorry for tryin' ta trick ya."

"This was Yuri's idea, wasn't it? He didn't trip onto my bed while investigating a sound on the roof."

"Heh… yeah, he asked me ta help out."

Karol took the present from under the tree and examined the label on it. "This is… Judith, isn't it?"

"Ah, we thought we could fool ya. She's done it for the past couple of years."

Karol looked up from the gift with a pout. "Why do you guys go to so much effort to trick me? Yuri tried to convince me Santa was real, Rita showed me a bunch of math that was supposed to be how the sleigh flies, Estelle and Flynn kept assuring me he was real and that they'd sent letters to him, too…. I bet even Repede is in on it, and he's a dog."

"It is kinda weird, ain't it? Millions of people are in on this conspiracy ta convince kids a fat man in a red suit sneaks into their house once a year to bring them presents. Our folks did the same ta us when we were tykes - it's nothin' against you or anythin'."

"Hrm…." Karol folded his legs up and hugged them. "You know, I really wanted it to be real. Santa is just… so nice, and I really wanted him to be real. But he's not, and now Christmas just seems… empty. Like there's no Christmas magic, there's just your friends with a cheap costume just like any day of the year."

Raven picked at the cuffs of his admittedly cheap costume. "I know how ya feel. When I was about 9, I snuck into my folks' closet and found a roll of wrapping paper hidden in the back. Christmas morning came and all the presents from 'Santa' were wrapped in that same paper. I'd had suspicions before that, but that really hammered the nail in Santa's coffin. I was pretty bummed for the rest of Christmas, and for a couple years after that, Christmas just never felt the same."

"Weren't you mad at your mom and dad for lying to you?"

Raven shrugged. "Maybe a little bit."

"When I'm a dad, I'm not ever gonna lie to me kids." He frowned deeply. "I don't get why everyone wants to lie to kids."

Raven thought for a bit, trying to pinpoint why he'd cared so much about convincing Karol that Santa was real. "Well… I think I get it. Ya know last year, when you still believed? And you told me all about the toy sword Santa brought you? You were just so excited!" Raven smiled at Karol's pout. "Reminded me of the time I started jumpin' up and down 'cause I got the Transformer I wanted when I was six. My folks said they wouldn't get it for me, but Santa came through! It was a good ol' Christmas miracle."

"Except it wasn't really Santa."

"Nah, but thinking it had been made me so happy. You're right - it's real nice to think that Santa exists. I'd rather live in a world where he does. I think grown-ups try so hard ta convince kids he's real because seeing you believe gives us a peek into that magical world we miss livin' in. I guess that's kinda selfish, huh?" He stretched his arms behind his head. "I don't get ta live in a world with flying reindeer anymore, so helpin' kids I care about live there is the closest I can get."

"I guess that makes sense." Pink light from the tree illuminated his thoughtful face. "So, you guys were just trying to re-live your own childhoods by watching me believe in Santa."

Raven frowned. "It sure sounds lame when you say it like that. It's not just about us, ya know? Us grown-ups remember how much fun we had when we believed, and we want ta share that with you." He glanced toward the doorway to the stairs and wondered if Yuri was sitting upstairs listening. He probably couldn't make out their conversation from his bedroom, right? "'Specially Yuri. He didn't have many happy Christmases growin' up, so he just wants ya to have what he never got."

"Hm…" Karol ran his fingers over the smooth paper and then tentatively shook it. The obvious clatter of Lego blocks made him smile. "So instead of Santa… all my best friends got together to convince me that magic is real. Because they wanted to see me happy."

"Pretty much."

"And all the presents I got from Santa… that was just you guys putting your money together and getting me stuff."

Raven nodded. "Past couple years, one of us came by around midnight and helped Yuri and Mr. Hanks set things up under the tree."

"You know… Santa is really great. But, I never met Santa. I thought a mysterious stranger was bringing me things, but it turns out all my friends go through huge effort every year to make Christmas special." He lifted his face, smiling earnestly for the first time. "I can't be sad about that. My friends are the best."

Raven grinned at him. "Maybe Santa isn't real… but people who love you and want to see you happy, and are generous and kind, those people are real. Now that you're a big kid and ya know the truth about ol' Saint Nick, maybe you can focus on becoming one of those people. Ta keep Santa alive, ya know?"

Karol beamed and bobbed his head. "Yeah! If Santa isn't real, then we can make him real. Or at least what he stands for."

"That's the spirit. Now then." Raven pushed off from the floor and creakily got to his feet. "Ooh, I'm too old for this." He stretched his legs and said, "Hey, you want to turn the game around?"

Karol jumped up with youthful ease that Raven envied. "Huh?"

"Yuri and the others might be pretty sad if you tell them their plan failed and you know the truth. Why not play along for another year? I know it'll make 'em mighty happy ta think you believe in Santa."

"Hm… ok." He set his present beneath the tree. "That'll be fun. Now, instead of them tricking me, I'm tricking them!"

"Exactly. So run on upstairs and tell Yuri all about how you got to meet the real life Sandy Claus. I still need to put some stuff in your stocking."

"Yuri's too?"

Raven nodded. "Mr. Hanks gave me some things to slip in there. And a bone for Repede."

"Ok. Goodnight, and merry Christmas, Raven."

Raven patted him on the head. "Merry Christmas, Karol."

The next day, Hanks' living room was filled with teenagers. After spending the morning at their own houses, the gang had convened here to share gifts with each other. Estelle lounged on the couch and skimmed through a new book, while Rita sat on the floor in front of her and tried to get the shrink wrap off of a CD. Raven sat in a chair sipping eggnog and watching Karol babble away to Yuri, Flynn, and Judith about his encounter with Santa the night before and how amazing it was.

Yuri kept grinning and feigned excitement to ask Karol about what gifts Santa had brought him. Raven didn't often see Yuri as happy as when he was talking to Karol about Santa, and it pleased him to see that he'd successfully brought the Christmas magic to at least one of his kids, even if it wasn't the one he'd expected.