Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing.
Author's Notes: My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you. Oh and another thing. I am NOT on drugs. Thank you.
Warnings: Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.
'On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Explosives and a Palm Tree.'
Christmas Spirit
"Heero, stop it!" Duo shouted up at Heero, who was currently on the roof of the safe house that all five gundam pilots had been forced to reside in. They had been there together for a total of three miserable days because the Docters had told them to take the Christmas season off to relax and try and enjoy the company of their fellow freedom fighters. But 'relaxing' wasn't exactly the word that any of the five pilots would have used to describe the experience.
At the beginning, the five were completely tense around one another and not really sure what to make of the others. Sure they had seen each other in passing on missions, but had never really gotten the chance to talk and get to know each another. After the tension came the careful greeting. Then they relaxed for a total of four seconds before the Gundam pilots started to work each other's every nerve.
The least happy of the house at the moment was probably Duo, who was currently standing in about 3 inches of snow, in the middle of the woods with his arms wrapped tightly around his lithe frame. He was shivering like mad because the white outfit he had borrowed from Wufei after his clothes became wet, did very little to keep out the cold that was seeping into his skin.
Heero, working on a few wires with his usual tunnel vision, paid little mind to what Duo was yelling and determinedly continued to fix a bomb around the chimney of the house.
"Heero! I was just joking! You can come down now! Santa can't really get into the house! It's just presents anyway! It's not like him and his little elves work for OZ!" Duo yelled, trying once more to coax the stubborn gundam pilot down off the roof.
Heero just huffed stubbornly and continued his work, down below Duo could be heard yelling loudly in anger before crunching through the snow to get back into the warmth of the house where he should have stayed. Lastly, Heero heard Duo shout, "Fine! Don't expect a present from me!" before Duo stomped into the house.
Heero mentally shrugged. 02 would get over it. It wasn't worth risking the security of the safe house. And if pilot 02 had been telling the truth, it was next to impossible keep Klaus out. Heero scowled down at his work as he wired one of the explosives, 02's feelings about his actions were most certainly not worth jeopardizing safety over.
Back in the cabin, Duo fell down on the couch in front of the roaring fire and sighed loudly, causing Wufei to look up from the book he was reading on Philosophy in the chair next to the couch.
"Yes Maxwell? Something bothering you?" Wufei asked with a slightly concerned but aggitated look, putting his finger in the book to mark his page and resting the book in his lap.
Duo groaned loudly and let his arm fall off the side of the couch. "No. I'm fine." He sighed dramatically.
After hearing the response, Wufei began to raise his book only to have his action cut off by the braided pilot, who decided to continue his statement. "Except for the fact that Heero is trying make Santa explode! I'm freezing! Stuck in this house. And hungry. But that last one is not really as important as the other three."
Wufei opened his mouth to make a reply to Duo's statement but was once again interrupted as Quatre came out of the small kitchen and into the living room with a loud sigh over Duo's complaints. "I told you not to go outside and disturb Heero. Plus, you have no one to blame but yourself for how cold you are after I told you to wear something water proof when going to set up a perimeter." Quatre said, shaking his head at Duo's actions but still shooting him a sypathetic look.
"So? That doesn't mean that it's any less true that Heero's insane." Duo responded, lifting his head up to look at Quatre and shoot a longing glance at one of the two mugs of hot chocolate that Quatre was holding.
Quatre laughed to himself, seeing the direction of Duo's look and he walked over to the couch to hand Duo one of the mugs and placed the other on the side table next to Wufei's chair. Wufei muttered his thanks without looking up from his book and Quate gave a small smile in response, before going to sit in one of the room's chairs to watch the fire crackle and pop.The room settled into a companionable silence, each of the boys lost in their own seperate worlds and enjoying what seemed like the first calm since they got there.
Duo stared up at the ceiling, currently lost in old memories of previous Christmas's. He remembered how on the streets they would all settle to begging, because people seemed to be extra giving around the holidays and they were all able to buy small presants for each other; he remembered how Sister Helen would always force them out into the snow to sing carols for people; he remembered how every single year he had gotten coal for Christmas. Dou frowned slightly at that last memory. He never had figured out why he had always gotten coal from Santa. As a child he had thought it was kinda' cool, like a pet rock (infact he still had his pet 'Rocky', who was safely in his pocket), but as he got older he started to get somewhat indignant of the fact that Klaus had deemed him 'not good enough' to recieve a gift. With a huff Duo decided to cast away that line of thought, and absentmindedly took one long drink from the mug.
A few moments after his long gulp from the cup, Dou's eyes widened and he let out a loud yelp of pain. He held his cup out to the side while fanning his tongue with wild, sparatic motions. "Oww! Mye ongue ith urning! Aye!"
Quatre looked over at him with a sympathetic look and said, "I was going to tell you to be careful with the hot chocolate, but it seems that you've already discovered that."
"No thit Therlock!" Duo said, still fanning his burnt tongue. Wufei looked up briefly from his book to cast Duo a disdainful look, wondering how someone like Duo could ever manage to become a gundam pilot. He seemed like such a five-year-old sometimes. With a sigh of acceptance, Wufei returned his attention back down to his book.
"I'm sorry Duo. Next time I won't be so quick to assume that you know that hot chocolate is indeed hot." Quatre said with a slight chuckle and grin.
Duo laughed and finally pulled his tongue back in his mouth. Who knew anyone else in this house could crack a joke? "Nah. It's cool. I've had worse than a burnt tongue."
Quatre smiled and took the seat across from the couch. "Now would you mind telling me exactly what it was that you said to get Heero up on the roof?"
To this question Duo just began to laugh even harder, "I told him about Old Saint Nick."
His response seemed to only confuse Quatre as he tilted his head to the side and shot Duo a perplexed look. "Who?" he asked, not understanding why a person with the word 'Saint' in their title would have any motivation to try and break into their safe house through the fireplace as Heero seemed convinced they were.
"Am I really the only one here who knows who Santa is?" Duo asked with a disbelieving look on his face, wondering how anyone could live without the legend of Santa Klaus. How could these guys be freedom fighters without such basic knowledge? Back on L2, even the youngest kid knew who Santa was. Duo gave a mental shrug. These people were probably just slow for gundam pilots and he was just going to have to tolerate them. But it was turning out to be a lot like babysitting, in his opinion.
"Wait, who is Santa? I thought it was Saint Nick?" Quatre replied, looking more confused then ever.
Duo sighed and resigned himself to a long, tiring vacation in this place. "Santa is Saint Nick. He also is called Kris Kringle, Jolly Old Elf, and Father Christmas. Santa is one of the many reasons on L2 as a kid that I would dream of getting to Earth. Santa is a big, jolly, old fat guy in red that flies around in his magic sleigh, pulled by nine flying reindeer. He goes around the Earth giving presents to all the good children and coal to the bad ones. After getting into the house through the chimney, he leaves stuff below a Christmas tree - which I'm appalled that this place has none – and possibly in stockings. The toys are made by tons of elves. Any questions?" Duo explained with a bored look, as if he were explaining this to a four year old.
"How does he know who is good or bad?"
"Spying elves."
"How does he know what most children want?"
"They write him lists."
"How do the reindeer fly?"
"Christmas spirit."
"How does Saint Nick get down the chimney?"
"Thinks thin."
"Why so many names?"
"Why so many questions?" Duo shot back with his bored look getting worse by the moment. He still didn't understand why he was the only one who didn't know about Santa and while he did find it amusing that the others were so clueless, he didn't really get a whole lot of entertainment from answering questions that in his mind seemed infantile. On normal occasions he wouldn't have been so short with others, especially Quatre whom he had deemed an alright guy, but being locked in a house for an undisclosed amount of time with four other very different guys had left his patience a little low.
Quatre sat there with a hurt look on his face and fished for a reply. His mouth was open as he struggled for something to say. Back with the Maganacs he would have never gotten a reply like that. He wished deeply that Rashid was there. The other pilots were nice and all, they just weren't tolerable after so much exposure to each of their unique quirks. Heero liked rigging their house with explosives, Duo was a bit too sarcastic and needed to be entertained constantly, Trowa was kind yet somewhat curt and reclusive, and Wufei was just an honor spaz. They could get very tiring after a while and didn't seem to possess the basic knowledge of how to be civil for over an hour.
"He has so many names because of all the cultures that have named him."
Quatre whipped his head around and realized that the answer to his previous question had come from Trowa, who had quietly slipped into the room without anyone noticing. No matter what, it seemed that the only person in the house that was ever able to hear his footsteps was Duo. Even Wufei had jumped a bit in surprise at hearing Trowa's voice.
After the initial shock wore off, Quatre smiled thankfully at Trowa for answering his question.
Duo could be heard sighing in relief from his place on the couch. "Finally someone normal here. I thought I was the only one!"
Trowa smiled slightly but Wufei did not seem as amused. Wufei once again used his finger to mark his page in the book and looked over at Duo. "If by normal, you mean strange people with even stranger notions of happy, fat men traveling around the world with flying deer, then sure, let's call you normal." He said, sarcasm dripping from his voice
Duo shot an angry glare over at Wufei. If looks could kill Wufei would be six feet under by this point. "You wanna' say that to my face justice obsessed, Asian?" Duo huffed, placing his hot chocolate on the hardwood floor.
With an annoyed sigh, Wufei stood and placed his book in the chair, crossing the room to stand in front of Duo. He leaned over so he was nose to nose with Duo and said in a mock pleasant voice, "In case all that hair of yours muffles your hearing, I shall repeat myself. I said, 'if by normal, you mean strange people with even stranger notions of happy, fat men flying around the world, then sure, let's call you normal.' You hear me clearly enough that time Maxwell?" Seeing Duo's expression grow darker, Wufei smirked. He knew he was testing fate, but after spending three days stuck in this house, being annoyed by the other pilots, he seemed to derive an unreasonable amount of enjoyment from annoying them at any chance he was given. Maxwell in particular.
Duo stuck his tongue out at Wufei and just as Wufei was about to threaten something along the lines of cutting it of...
BOOM!
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
Crunch.
Forgetting all their annoyances with one another, all four pilots rushed to the safe house front door while each reaching for a gun.
Quatre, who was the first to get outside, couldn't help but start snickering at the sight that lay out in front of him.
Outside in the snow, lay a very burnt and unhappy looking Heero, who was crouching on one knee and rubbing his head, glancing up at the roof and mumbling obscenities in Japanese. Even funnier was the roof, where about 20 shingles were scattered about and the bricks on the chimney were charred a dark brown.
Standing on his tip toes, Duo arched his neck to look over Quatre's shoulder, where he promptly blurted out, "Told ya' so!" to the annoyed Heero.
Heero just growled in response and got to his feet, looking up in aggravation at the roof.
"Might I ask what has happened here?" Trowa asked Heero while stepping around both Quatre and Duo to walk out into the snow so he could assess the damage done to the roof. For some reason, so far, when ever anything got broken (which had happened a surprising amount of times considering they had only lived in the house for three days), he always seemed to be the one called in to fix it. He felt like a maid cleaning up after a bunch of children. And in this particular case, a bunch of children with explosives.
Heero, not even bothering to take his eyes off the roof, replied, "Minimal damage to wood work. Slight damage to primary layer of shingles. Over all, should still be in perfect working order."
Trowa nodded and began to head back indoors. He wasn't really one for standing out in the snow barefoot if he didn't have to.
Duo and Wufei, upon seeing that there was nothing of interest like a fire, chose to go back indoors, where they both returned to their seats, argument forgotten.
Quatre stayed outside slightly longer to usher Heero away from his precious 'Klaus Trap' and into the warmth of the safe house, getting Heero his own cup of hot chocolate and some nerve soothing tea for himself.
When Quatre returned indoors, he found Duo rummaging through a desk that was positioned off to the side of the main room, grabbing all the paper and pens that he found inside. Quatre stifled a groan at the sight of Duo. He was getting office supplies all over the floor and Alah knew what he had planned for all that paper. Surrendering to the inevitable, Quatre chose to take a seat on the couch and wait to see what it was exactly that Duo was up to. Apparently, he wasn't the only one to have that idea. All the other pilots had either been instructed to sit or had chose to do so of their own free will, but never the less, all the pilots, excluding Duo, were seated in the living room. Even Heero had chose to stay around and see what the strange American was up to now.
Finally, Duo seemed to be satisfied and he came back to the area near the fire place and dumped an armful of paper and pens onto the floor in the middle of the room, smiling proudly at his handy work.
Wufei just looked from the pile on the floor to Duo and then back down to the pile a few times before finally asking a question to break the silence while Duo seemed to be basking in his own brilliance. "Well? Why have you dumped this mess on the floor?"
Duo faked a mock hurt look before answering the question, "Well now I figured since all of you, excluding Trowa, are slightly Christmas retarded, I figured the best way to teach you is for you to endure all the Christmas traditions of Saint Nick!"
Both Heero and Wufei groaned in unison, while Quatre looked overjoyed to be able to participate in this activity. Trowa just sighed at Duo's logic and asked, "Since I already know all this, do I have to participate?"
Duo just continued beaming down at his pile of paper and pens and replied, "Yes. And so do the rest of you. Or I'm forcing you out of the house and into the snow."
Both Heero and Wufei silently scoffed at Duo's ability to kick them out of the house, but chose to keep silent. If there was anything that they had learned in the past three days about Duo, it was that he was stubborn once he got an idea in his head. The only one of the pilots who could really claim to match Duo's stubborness was Wufei, unless you counted Heero who, instead of arguing people into submission like Duo or Wufei, would just do as he deemed best and ignore any protests. In the end, both Heero and Wufei deemed it best to just save their breath while waiting for a proper explaination.
Duo turned to the group with a large smile on his face and said, "Alright, as I explained to Quatre earlier, you have to write a list for Santa for him to know what you want for Christmas," Trowa groaned, already guessing what Duo had planned, but Duo just continued as if he hadn't heard, "So you all are writing your lists. And they better be good or you get coal. It's a rule. And since I already wrote mine, I'll be back once you all have finished."
Quatre happily stood up to get a piece of paper and pen to start his list, but the others stood around for a few minutes wondering if Duo was actually serious, before finally getting their supplies.
Meanwhile, Duo was busy searching for the fake plastic, potted tree that he was sure he had seen somewhere in the house. If only he could remember where it was...
After 10 minutes of searching the small, seven roomed house, Duo finally let out a cry of victory as he found the three foot tall, fake potted palm tree. Wasn't exactly festive, but it would have to do, Duo thought to himself while inspecting the tree.
Duo hoisted the palm tree over his shoulder and carted it into the center of the living room, ignoring the odd looks he was getting from his fellow pilots. Duo positioned the tree in the direct center of the room, with a proud glance at the tree.
From the corner of his eye, Duo noticed that Quatre was raising his hand, looking very much like a young child that had a question in school. With a sigh at Quatre's oddness, Duo said, "Yes, Quatre, what is it?"
Quatre smiled that he was noticed and asked, "What is that for?"
"Christmas tree." was Duo's reply, still wondering how the other's couldn't know such simple stuff like this.
"Oh." Quatre went back to work on his list, adding and crossing out words at random.
At that moment, Heero rose from his chair and began walking towards the door of the house.
Duo watched him curiously, "Heero?" Duo waited but got no reply or even an indication that Heero had heard him. Without a word to any of the other pilots, Heero opened the front door, pulled a knife from his boot and used it to attach the note he had written as his 'Christmas list' to the door.
Duo just figured it was better not to ask and looked over to see that all the others had also finished writing and smiled. "Good, you're done."
"That was pointless." Wufei growled at Duo, folding his list and placing it as a bookmark in his book.
Duo just laughed and smiled at Wufei. "That's the point, Wu'! It's a holiday. Everything about them is pointless!"
Wufei rolled his eyes but remained silent in hopes Duo would forget whatever else he may have planned for their 'holiday fun'.
"So what do we do with the lists?" Quatre asked with a excited expression on his face. He was really beginning to enjoy this. It was like learning first hand about all the different cultures he had read about while at home and plus, anything was better than the tension that had been clouding the house for the last three days.
Duo smiled over at Quatre, beginning to be caught up in his own Christmas spirit, "Well you put 'em under the Christmas tree. Remember, Santa sees and knows all."
After the last sentence, Heero's eyes snapped to focus on Duo. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean, his elves see all and report back to him." Duo said and only a few seconds later seemed to realize what he had done. But it was already too late. Heero was off, storming around the house, trying to find out how these elves were spying on him. Duo just hoped explosives weren't going to be involved this time.
After taking up everyone's lists and placing them at the base of Duo's so called 'Christmas tree', Quatre once again turned his attention back to Duo and asked, "Now what?"
"Hm?" Duo turned to look at Quatre, who was looking at him with expectant eyes. "Next? We can't have anything next."
Quatre's excited expression soon turned to what Duo had nicknamed Quatre's you-kicked-my-puppy face. "Why?"
"Because, if you use up too much Christmas spirit 12 days before Christmas, you wont have enough left to go all out the night before Christmas. You gotta' build up."
"Oh." Quatre looked crestfallen but seemed to accept Duo's explanation, and the others just didn't really seem to care much if they stopped the Christmas festivities for the day.
Trying to console Quatre, Duo said, "Hey, don't worry, I'll think up even better stuff for tomorrow. You just wait." With a smile, Duo then left the room, off in search of something fun to do, while everyone else just seemed to settle back into their normal routine with Quatre filing reports, Wufei reading a book, Trowa sharpening his knives, and Heero searching for wayward elves to destroy.
Nothing out of the ordinary in that house. No siree. Just a good amount of healthy Christmas spirit.
And now a word from our sponsor...
I had so much fun writing this but so much writer's block. I couldn't decide how I wanted to end it. I knew how I wanted it to start but the middle and end were completely unknow for me.
I know it stinks. I blame the writer's block, but it is the largest thing I've done in one sitting. Go me! I just can't wait to finish this series. It is going to be so great. I've been looking forward to this all year!
And PS: R-r-r-remix! I made some slight edits to this chapter.