A/N: Well, you know how the story goes… And so does Shiro. ;)

I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
Aaaand I don't own anything Dickens did, either.

So came the twenty-third, whipped at lightning speed by winter winds and children's wishes. The air was crisp and crackling with expectation, and the deepening dusk saw the Academy outshine the city with its outrageous decorations, like one gigantic Christmas tree of stone and man-made stars. Snow came, as snow does, in amounts that made children shriek with joy and adults sigh at the prospect of many a sweaty hour with the shovel. Even then, the city did its best to welcome the season, with the smell of burnt almonds in every street corner, bells jingling in every SevenEleven speaker, and anticipation adorning each face with a particularly hearty glow. It was the twenty-third indeed, and in the playful gusts that swept the streets of True Cross Town could be heard Christmas knocking expectantly on every door.

There was, of course, one door on which Christmas did not bother knocking, or even care for such mundane things as opening it.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Had the frost that lined the windowsill been heated, and a not-so-tiny bit of sour in taste, it would have been truly an appropriate metaphor for the associations Sir Pheles' tone invoked. He stood, garbed in white and hands on hips, inside a door he had not disturbed, and trained a most affronted glare at the jagged symbols drawn in chalk.

"You tell me. I don't know Sumerian: I only know how to draw wards."

"It's a nuisance." The warding symbols – anti-demon knowledge six thousand years of age – were rendered useless with but a flick of Sir Pheles' wrist; they glowed and hissed and broke, like light bulbs giving out. "And a quite far cry from keeping me out, at that. Really, a demon of my standing-"

"Yeah yeah, royalty and demigod: got that. Words didn't get through to you, so I opted for action this time around." It was well past midnight, and Christmas Eve was due; yet Fujimoto kept his cup of coffee faithful company at the table, and made no move to rise when Sir Pheles sauntered to him. "Quit this Christmas spirit thing, will you?" he entreated, weary both from vigil and from work. "It didn't work the first two times, and a trip to my neglected grave in the future isn't gonna make me feel any more spirited. Yeah, I read the book." And since it was an old, persistent habit of Sir Pheles' to hold him for an uneducated ape, Fujimoto displayed the thumbed old copy of A Christmas Carol he had borrowed from the Academy library the day before. "Just leave it, Mephisto. I'm a lost cause. Go have yourself your annual Pagan Christmas orgy."

Now, Sir Pheles was, as a proper demon and proper royalty, used to obtaining what he desired: by gift, by scheme, by theft, or by purchase, anything he wanted soon became his. To arouse a feeling of seasonal joy in a human might not be part of his profession per se, but that certainly did not change the fact that it was something that he wanted; and thus, it was something he had set mind on achieving by any means.

"I thought you'd learnt that lesson long ago, Shiro", smiled the Branch Director: "It's a grave mistake to underestimate me. Eins-"

"Don't you do it."

"Zwei-"

"I'm serious, Mephis-"

"Drei!"

The wind tossed snow at the intruders, but since they were not bothered by it Fujimoto assumed again that their minds had left without their physical containers. A landscape melted out of the apartment walls; a city, vast and yawning as it stretched itself towards the sky, reaching up to pull the heavy, glistening blanket down and go to sleep. It struck him as familiar – such an odd sensation to be ambushed by –, this patch of open sky with only the tramway tracks soaring above on concrete legs. Buildings here were smaller, made not for offices and agencies but people who sought a place to live where night was night, and nights were peaceful. One could still see the giant spectacle of True Cross Academy in the distance, but the humble houses where they stood had already closed their shutter eyes to sleep.

…and it occurred to him that yes, it was familiar: it was the monastery where his community held Mass.

He would serve there so long, then, that he was buried on its turf? A most disturbing feeling, and he knew just who was to blame.

"Holy shi-!"

Who was to blame? Certainly not the towering creature at his side, veiled from view in its tattered shadow cloak; a spectre of the underworld with leave to reap the crops above it. It was beyond the reach of light, a hole cut in the winter darkness like a window into the wastelands of Sheol and its rotting-

-laughter.

"That was not funny, you jerk!" snarled Fujimoto upon hearing the damnably familiar giggles from the darkness.

"Tsk tsk, no jerk, Shiro: the Ghost of Christmases to Come~"

"Dickens is turning in his grave", he muttered, and watched as the image of the Reaper was dismantled and shed into thin air. "Bloody shape shifters…"

Not here, either, did Sir Pheles deign to use a door, it seemed; like an elf he trod the snow, left no mar or mark in winter's powder, as he manoeuvred briskly 'round the snowman to peer in through the windows on the garden side.

Back there were the living quarters, reminisced Fujimoto, and strode traceless 'cross the snow to see whatever lunacy he would have to prevent his friend from instigating. He had learnt, indeed, not to underestimate the old trickster, who seemed to never age a day past boisterous thirteen, although some scriptures – best not let Sir Pheles see them – claimed he could be thousand-fold that age.

No need to shutter the windows on this side, the monks reasoned, as the only voyeurs they risked attracting were the winter birds that came to feast on leftover bread. The monastery slept, softly like a murmured litany, save for one window that flickered with the golden light of fire. Sir Pheles stopped before it – impaled, one would think, by the light that seemed to pass right through his ghostly form – and peered inside. His eyes brightened, then, and he nodded to himself like one who counts his monthly salary and finds it correct down to the last yen.

"Still thinking I'm about to show you your headstone, Shiro?" he smiled, and beckoned his friend closer.

In the eyes of his students – and some peers, though few of them would say it – Fujimoto was a demon. He was composed, and harsh, and ruthless, and no exorcist had ever seen him balk or flinch. This only serves to show that humans trust their eyes far more often than they should. Fujimoto balked at the Branch Director's beckoning. Sir Pheles had seen him flinch, had seen him freeze in horror and snarl in fury – more often than not been the cause of it, darn goat –, and he knew tricks for throwing the most unflappable man off balance.

Composure was the sole shield he had against the Devil seizing him. That composure could never falter, never fail, never let his unguarded heart grant access to his flesh. Thus, it never did.

…but no rule without exception.

The tree caught his attention first: a modest evergreen, grateful for the garlands and the baubles that helped cover its meagre branches. The glass caught the shimmer of the sleepy fire in the hearth, as did the familiar, round spectacles on the nose of his future self. He was comfortably seated in the spacious old armchair the abbot used to sit in; he did not look that much older, not that he could see. And because he squinted so hard in search of difference, he failed to note, at first, what his future self was doing.

He'd seen the storybook, true; it was hard not to spot it, where it spread across the blanket covering his lap. He had not seen the bulges breathing under it, nor the thick, dark tufts of hair that disappeared against the black fabric of his cassock.

"Kids? What's…? Are you paying me so bad I have to do babysitting to make ends meet?"

Such a comfortable, familiar resort it is, humour, when one does not dare believe that frail, deceitful voice of hope that so often tells us lies.

"They're yours", murmured Sir Pheles softly. "These twin brothers are born and orphaned the day after Christmas Day, a few years from now. You adopt them."

They were… truly… his…?

"The one still struggling to stay awake is Yukio, the youngest: afraid of many things, but most of all of losing this makeshift family you've made for them. Such a wary little bird, always hides behind your cassock when strangers come to visit you at church; but under your supervision, he will grow into a boy genius. Youngest exorcist ever to pass his exams at True Cross Academy – and such a girl magnet", he added with a hearty chuckle. "Big brother Rin has no patience with books and stories: he's a rambunctious little hotspur, the kind of soul who wants to do good but is discouraged by his frequent failures. Like father, like sons, no~?"

The jibe did not reach its target, Sir Pheles knew, for one furtive glance told him Fujimoto had not heard a single word that followed "adopt". His smile stretched wider, then, as his tongue touched the sweet juices of success.

"Rin and… Yukio…"

How wonderful they tasted, those names – like sunshine! Like rain! Like dirty t-shirts and skinned knees, runny noses and neglected homework!

"And Shura, not to forget." At this, Fujimoto jolted out of his daze, every soldier nerve end at the ready for a brusque command. "No, not that kind – you've seen enough bloodshed already. You have a daughter by the name of Shura, older than these two boys by ten years; another orphan you didn't have the heart to abandon", smiled Sir Pheles as the tension seeped out of the exorcist, like a balloon deflating. "She lives at the Academy, a prodigy as both Knight and Tamer." His smile turned devilish, then; the charming kind of devil that is far more dangerous than the one true to its nature. "She's very beautiful – and you make sure early on that she can eviscerate any man who bothers her because of it."

Two sons, and a daughter.

A family.

He had not felt like this since he was an Esquire on his first mission; trembling, no more in control of his muscles than he was of his racing heartbeat. But this new feeling…! This soaring cry that spread its wings inside his chest, threatening to fly up his throat like a star shooting 'cross the galaxy…! It was too great, too overwhelming – it stuck, beating wings aching in his throat and blurring the room before his eyes.

"You raise three fine children, Shiro", Sir Pheles' voice murmured, fading into the silent snowfall. "They all grow strong, each in their own way. They are all very much like you, each in their own way."

Fujimoto gave no reply but watched, in breathless enchantment, how the little mouth gaped wide as Yukio yawned, and the thick-rimmed glasses bumped askew when eyelids surrendered and his head fell heavy against the black-clad chest.

There was one door on which Christmas did not bother knocking: it seeped in, in gentlemanly fashion, like one lone white beam of moonlight detached from the window. Cat-foot light it strode towards the table, quiet not to rouse the man whose back heaved slowly with the rhythm of sleep; arms crossed to make a pillow for his head, next to a forlorn mug of coffee and a stack of graded exams.

Gentle fingers plucked the glasses off, and coaxed the string of beads away that draped around his neck. The glasses folded soundlessly – the one thing he did take care of, in this hopelessly barren storage room he called his home – and were set aside to rest. The sleeper did not stir – too tired to note or care, with pale stubble on his chin and dark half-moons sagging beneath his eyes.

There was a chuckle, then, followed by a sigh that only superficially chided, and a silken handkerchief that dabbed away the moisture on his cheek; the smile, it left on the sleeper's lips.

"Merry Christmas, Shiro."

A/N

Shura – means "carnage", the way her name is spelt. Without knowing it's the name of a person, any parent would be worried.

Julbock – Yule goat, is what we had in Sweden before we had Santa Claus delivering the gifts. It's some weird amalgamation between the goat as a Norse fertility symbol and the goat as a symbol of the Devil: a "tamed" version of evil, with Medieval roots. Julbocken was an ambiguous bastard who could be evil and rambunctious, and play tricks on you; but he could also leave you gifts if he felt like it.

The title is a paraphrase of a very famous (er, in Sweden) Christmas poem by Viktor Rydberg, about the old folktale creature that lent its name to our present-day Scandinavian Santa Claus: tomten. He was originally more similar to a small folk kind of thing that helped you look after house and cattle during winter. In this particular poem, tomten is doing his rounds and chores at the farm one winter night, checking on the house folk and all the animals, while pondering a very, very difficult question: where does Time come from, and where does it go? And how fast time flies for the humans he watches over… The sole creature on the farm that wakes and sees tomten, is the guard dog Karo. His only reaction is wagging his tail sleepily, because he knows tomten and knows he means no harm – even if humans would be quite startled to discover a supernatural creature living so close to them.

God Jul, allihopa. =)