Work Text:
Karolina knew how hard Molly tried to be brave. Molly had spirit. She had what Karolina's parents used to call pluck. Young though she was, she was good at hiding pain, and working through it. It was something Karolina wished she could do, herself.
At the same time, she knew what it was like to be eleven years old and to have no one to talk to. She'd been in that position six years ago Her parents had been kind enough, but busy, and so competent, they weren't people she'd felt she could confide in. She had confided a lot in Nico, but they didn't see as much of each other as she'd have liked, and she was afraid of raising the Big Thing between them. She couldn't just come out and say, "I'm gay, and in love with you." Even if she had wanted to. To her parents, being gay was neither here nor there. No point talking about the more troubling social aspects of it - to them, such aspects simply didn't exist. But they didn't need to worry about: they were straight.
At eleven, maybe, her thinking hadn't been exactly clear on the topic. (Or later. Or ever.) But having someone to talk to freely could have been nice. A friend? A sister? No such person existed, but it made her want to be the friend or the sister that Molly might need.
When Molly hid herself away, Karolina made a point of finding her. Not to intrude, hopefully, but to let her know she was there if Molly wanted to talk. Molly wasn't in her room, but she was easy enough to find, sitting in the library of the sprawling underground mansion that was their new home. Molly sat on the floor, in the middle of the carpet, her arms around her knees. She wasn't actually crying, but there were tear-tracks on her face.
"Hey," said Karolina.
"Hey," said Molly listlessly.
Karoline closed the door behind her. "Do you want company?"
"Sure."
She sat down, cross-legged. "What's up?"
"Nothing."
Karolina was still trying to think of an answer to that when Molly, who at heart was a very honest girl, amended her statement. "Christmas."
"It's coming up."
"Yeah. We used to have a tree and stockings and everything. I didn't really believe in Santa Claus, but we put out cookies and milk and pretended we heard the reindeer on the roof. It was fun. And there was a tree, and presents, and…" The tears started falling again. "It's stupid, but I miss it."
"I do, too," said Karolina. It wasn't so much Christmas with her parents she missed - they didn't pay much attention to the holiday, and often weren't home - but the housekeeper would decorate the place beautifully, so it was all sparkles and lights and bits of plastic holly. She loved the lights; the idea of Christmas. The fun part of Christmas was spent with her friends - caroling and watching sentimental movies on TV. She loved A Christmas Carol, with its happy ending for everyone.
Quoting Louisa May Alcott, she said, "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," and realized that she wasn't cheering Molly up at all.
"It isn't the presents," said Molly. 'm not greedy."
"I know. Moll, let's make a Christmas."
Molly frowned fiercely. "How? We can't buy stuff. We don't even have a tree."
"We can make things. It isn't what we have, it's what we do."
"Nico and Gert will think it's lame."
"Old Lace will like it. No, really. We'll show them. Maybe keep it a secret at first? So no one will laugh. They need cheering up, too. We may not have money but we can have fun."
Molly wrinkled her nose, trying to hide a smile. "You're crazy."
"Yeah, but it's a good kind of crazy."
"I know how to make popcorn chains and stuff. But we don't have a tree."
"Leave it to me," said Karolina.
*
Because Karolina was trying to teach herself to be organized, she used her notebook to list what they needed for Christmas. She wrote:
1. Tree (?)
2. Christmas food (candy? turkey? decorated cookies?)
3. Music (we can sing?)
It had altogether too many question marks and not enough substance. It turned out to less easy than she had hoped to find a Christmas tree in Los Angeles when she had no money to buy one and was too proud to steal. She found what she thought was an abandoned tree, left in a ditch, but when she tried to drag it back to the road, its owner shouted at her and she ran.
She tried to make candy, but it wasn't as easy as it looked. There were supplies in the kitchen; there were unused implements - some, she had no idea what they were meant for - and there were cookbooks. But after two hours of attempting to make cookies (which burned) and candy (which created an inedible mess), she felt more dispirited than Molly.
Making it worse, Nico came by, looking skeptically at the blackened cookies. "I didn't know you baked."
"Obviously, I don't," said Karolina, sadly.
Nico tentatively bit into the cookie and bravely chewed. "It's not so bad, as long as you're careful not to break your teeth."
"But it isn't good, either!"
"Well, no," conceded Nico, abandoning the rest of the cookie. "What are you trying to prove?"
"I don't know. Something. To prove I can do it, I guess."
"Anybody can make cookies," said NIco, though that was obviously not true.
*
Sometimes Karolina wondered what she was doing here – anywhere. Who was she? What was she? Once, she thought she knew. She imagined herself an all-American girl, the kind who got along with others, did well in school, and was likely to succeed at least in most mundane ways. She was gay, but that just made her extra-cool. She supposed she thought, in her heart of hearts, that one day Nico would fall in love with her. It was nice to dream about. She knew the life she wanted. Pleasant and successful.
But no. She was the child of crazy aliens. She was born on earth, but hadn't an ounce of Earth blood in her body. At least her blood wasn't green like the Vulcans. That would have been mortifying. Though in that case, learning she was Majesdanian would have been less of a surprise.
"There's nothing wrong with being an alien," Nico had said. But that was missing the point. The problem was… She could fly. She could light up the sky. She could make light into force-shields in ways she still didn't understand. It was pretty. It was fun. It was sometimes useful. But she hadn't the faintest idea how she did it, or what it meant.
There was no one to ask. She was quite sure there was no one on the planet still alive who knew anything about Majesdane, except for the name. Her parents had suppressed her powers and told her nothing. In all the hugeness of space, she had no idea where their planet might even be. She wanted to scream at them: why didn't you tell me? Couldn't I have had lessons in Majesdanian language and culture? Couldn't you have given me a clue?
Maybe should would have tried, but by the time she knew what was happening, they were gone. They had been more interested in crazy elder gods than in anything practical. She would like to think they hadn't even been good actors, but they were - they'd been hard-working, too. They could have been successful at anything. So why had they tried to be evil?
Their acting was so good, they had hidden the evil, and their origins, even from here. Totally convincing. The doctors they played on TV had been no less a fiction than the parents she thought she knew.
Her past was a mystery, like her future. She had nothing and no one, except for the other Runaways.
And come hell or high water, she was going to give Molly her Christmas.
She had four days left to pull it off.
*
Three days, and they were doing battle with someone who called herself Gigantor. Gigantor was big, strong, stubborn, and too stupid to give up even when Molly was pounding on her legs and telling her to sit down. As Karolina swooped down from above to attack her ear, Gigantor swatted her like a fly.
She blacked out for a while. When she woke, she had landed - a soft landing, luckily, in a barren gully. Nothing broken, though there would be bruises. Winded, aching, she curled up into a ball on the ground. Gigantor was a bully. Why'd she have to be so big?
She didn't want to go back and fight. But if she didn't move… One of her friends might be hurt. Molly. Even Old Lace, who was strong, but not invulnerable. Or… oh dear god… Nico.
Karolina pushed herself into a sitting position. They needed her, and they needed her now.
As she stood she saw, right in front of her, the perfect Christmas tree. Maybe not perfect in any objective sense - it was small, but then, she couldn't carry a big one. A little lopsided, but no worse for it. She made a note of the location as she rose into the air, heartened by the sight. Inspired, even. She was a woman with a Christmas tree. What belligerent giant head-case could match that?
She found her friends easily enough - there weren't many thirty-foot women in L.A. surrounded by angry teens. She dove for the face, bombarding Gigantor with balls of light-force. They wouldn't hurt, not much, but they would distract and blind her.
Nico shouted, "Shrinkify!" and suddenly Gigantor was about three feet tall, and cowering. They could hear the sirens of approaching police cars. Bystanders were shouting at them.
"Run!" shouted Gert.
They ran, all but Karolina. Karolina flew. She flew back over the housing development, past the highways, over the scrub-land and back into the gully. She used a rock to batter the little tree out of its niche, and headed home, flying low, cradling the awkward thing in her arms.
*
Two days later, Gert found her in the kitchen, breaking an egg into a bowl and ready to scream. Another egg rolled off the counter-top, landing splat on the no-longer-clean floor. She looked at it reproachfully. "What's with you?" Gert asked. "You're trying out for a cooking show?"
"I just thought we should have cookies for Christmas."
"Oh," said Gert. "Why didn't you say so?"
"I wanted to surprise you all."
"I can make the cookies," said Gert.
Karolina stared at her in surprise. "You can bake?"
"Like a champ. Obviously you never learned how."
"The housekeeper always did the cooking. She offered to teach me, but…." Karolina shrugged. "I just never bothered."
Gert put her hands on her hips and raised her chin. "So. You want to do it? Or let an expert take over?"
Karolina grinned widely. "It's all yours!"
Gert looked suspiciously at the ingredients. "Chocolate chip?"
"For starters."
"I am the master of the chocolate chip," said Gert, and went to the cupboard, where she pulled out an apron. Karolina hadn't even known the apron was there.
*
Karolina had dealt with presents, in a manner of speaking. She had looked up Christmas songs online, and made a few printouts of the lyrics. She decorated the tree with twists of aluminum foil, and hung cranberries on it with paper clips.
It didn't exactly look like the best from Macy's, but it had, she thought, a certain charm. An orphan tree, for runaways. It seemed suitable.
*
The day before Christmas, Old Lace disappeared. He'd been out with Gert, just after dark, for exercise and playtime, when he bellowed, hopped a fence, and disappeared. "It's as if he blinked out of existence," explained Gert, shaking with worry and rage. "I can't find him with my mind. He's just gone."
They split up the turf, and went looking. They knew where Gert had last seen Old Lace and spread out from there. Molly found a fresh dinosaur footprint two blocks away, with marks of human boots around it.
"Looks like a kidnapping," said Chase grimly.
It was impossible to tell whether she had been taken away by truck or on foot. "We can't exactly go door to door asking if anyone has seen a stolen dinosaur," said Nico.
"When people lose cats, they put up notices with pictures," said Molly.
"Not helpful," said Chase.
"They'd need somewhere to put her," said Karolina, thinking. "Somewhere bigger and more solid than a garage or a house."
"A warehouse?" mused Chase. They checked their map while Karolina made light for them to read by, brighter than the street lights. There were a few warehouses not far away, but no telling how far Old Lace had been taken. There were also two movie studios, a few derelict buildings that could have been anything, and an abandoned theatre.
"Maybe if Gert gets close enough, she can hear her again," said Chase.
They split up: Gert and Nico together, Case and Molly together, and Karolina flying to the furthest likely location - one of the warehouses. It was surrounded by a high fence, which is no obstacle if you're flying. She came in low, and put her ear to the door. She thought she heard something. A voice? Could be squatters. But intuition told her this was it - that Old Lace was inside.
Before she could try the door, someone hit her over the head.
She woke up angry. Unconscious twice in two days. How long till brain damage sets in? She had a headache - not as bad as she might expect - and she was lying on straw. Pulling herself together, she raised herself into the air, glowing. She was in a large cage, with Old Lace lying limply beside her.
She had almost no light left in her now. In the dark, she put her arms around Old Lace's neck and willed her to wake up. She didn't seem to be hurt. She thought she heard a slight snore as she shook her. Drugged? Perhaps the kidnappers had lured her into a trap with drugged meat. She could hear, muffled by walls, other sounds of animals in distress - hard to tell what they were. A cat? A fox, or a coyote, or a wolf was howling. It was creepy. Creepier still when the sound died away.
Karolina imagined these animals had been stolen for sale. She wondered what the going rate was for a dinosaur, and a girl made of coloured light.
A light came on, a bare bulb hanging from a high ceiling. There was a man outside the cage door, not much older than her, but larger by far. "How'd you do that?" he asked. "That thing with the lights? Are you a mutant? Fairy? Alien?"
"Let us go," said Karolina, coldly. "You have no right to keep us here."
The man laughed. He was missing teeth. "Who you going to report us to?" he said. "Is this a cloned dinosaur? How'd you get him?"
If she could summon up any power at all, she could maybe hit him with a force-ball, or send up lights to alert the other Runaways. As it was, she was helpless.
"Anyway, girly," he said, "You have to do what we tell you or we'll kill your pet."
Beside her, Old Lace growled, deep in her throat. An eerie sound Karolina had never heard before. Old Lace could be scary when she wanted to be. But thank god: she was alive.
Old Lace jumped to her feet, and roared.
Their captor ran, slamming a door behind him. Old Lace snuffled in a satisfied manner, and Karolina stroked her neck. "Good girl," she said. At least they had light, which made things less frightening. But after a few hours the bulb burned out and fizzled into darkness. Karolina hated the dark: it made her weak, it made her frightened, it made her helpless.
She hated that.
There was nothing to do. She sat in the straw, leaning on Old Lace's back. She felt hollow, defeated. Did the others know she was missing? They must have realized it hours ago, but they hadn't come yet. Which probably meant they couldn't find her. Would they find her before the man and his companions turned up? Would they find her before she and Old Lace were spirited away, or killed?
It must be Christmas now. Christmas morning. Not exactly the day she'd planned.
Would a true Majesdanian be afraid? Knowing nothing about Majesdanians, she had no idea, but she expected that on her parents' home planet they would have the courage she lacked, alone of her kind, trapped in a cage somewhere in California.
*
She slept, or became lost in her own dreams of fear and danger. The next thing she knew was brightness - light. Sunlight.
Molly had kicked in the door and part of the wall with it.
The Runaways were there, shouting. Nico said something, and the lock popped off her door. Old Lace roared, and the sound seemed to mean, "About time you turned up!" and "Let's kick some ass!" at the same time, in growly dinosaur talk.
"They're getting away!" shouted Gert, running outside. Old Lace followed her with a bounce. With a smile she couldn't shake, Karoline jumped to her feet as Nico grabbed her hands. "Are you okay?"
"I am now." She felt the tickle of sunlight touch her body. "Let's go."
They ran together to the doorway. Chase was shouting something into a walkie-talkie, or a radio, or a cell phone - a device that had belonged to their captors. She saw the man who had leered at her, lying on the ground with Old Lace's foot firmly on his chest. Old Lace was growling.
"Bunch of losers," muttered Molly. There was a streak of mud on her face, but she never looked better. Karolina lifted herself in to the air, feeling every colour of the spectrum, every ounce of light energy which infused her body. She targeted a the running men - bearded, scruffy, panicked - and surrounded his head with a force-bubble of light, under which she could hear him screaming in fear. "Being helpless doesn't feel so good, does it?" she said. "Grow up. And merry Christmas to you."
She was still elated when they got home. Nico had never looked so beautiful. Gert kept petting Old Lace's shoulder, and giving her treats. Molly was triumphant. Chase was Chase, mellow and sarcastic at the same time.
"And guess what!" enthused Molly. "There's a Christmas tree in our living room."
"Yeah," said Karolina. "I put it there."
"Before you and Old Lace were kidnapped?"
"There are presents, too."
"Real presents?"
"Not exactly," said Carolina, but Molly had already started to run. Karolina felt a little abashed. Would Molly be disappointed? They all went into the living room. She took a deep breath as they looked at the drab little tree with its makeshift ornaments of tinsel and fruit. She took the light within her, and thrust it at the tree - first a twinkle of green, then a cascade of revolving spirals, all colors of the rainbow, gold and green and silver. She made it the sparkliest tree anyone had ever seen.
"Awesome!" said Gert, as if she really meant it. Impulsively, Karolina hugged her, and Gert blushed. Then Gert went to get the chocolate chip cookies, and the pitcher of milk to go with them, and a candy cane for each of them - which they hung on the tree among them dancing lights.
Karolina brought in her box of makeshift presents, a little embarrassed. "They aren't real presents," she said. "I didn't have any money, and… Well, you'll see. I couldn't give you gifts, so I'm giving you compliments."
Molly frowned. "Compliments? In a box?"
"You don't need to give us anything," said Nico, uncomfortable.
"I wanted to say what I thought," said Karolina. "What I felt. You all deserve the truth. You all deserve to know how great you are."
Gert pushed her classes more firmly on her nose. "But we aren't."
"You are! You are heroes! You just saved me and Old Lace, didn't you?" She reached into her box, pulling out pieces of colored paper, ribbons attached to them, their message printed in colored ink. Each card had a string attached. The first was shaped like a star, for Molly. She read it aloud. "To Molly, whose spirit is as strong as her body."
Molly looked at her feet. "Nobody ever said my spirit was strong before." She looked up, and grinned. "I like it."
Karolina draped the ribbon over Molly's head, so she could wear the card like a pendant.
The next was for Gert: a rectangle with a silhouette drawing of a girl in glasses, and a dinosaur. Karolina read: "If brains and good sense were worth money, you'd be a millionaire."
"I wish," said Gert, looking rather pleased. She took her card from Karolina's hand, and instead of hanging it from her neck, hung it from Old Lace's. The dinosaur preened.
For Chase, the card was shaped like an angel: "Good looks, style, and new skills all the time. You make us feel safe."
He looked at the card for a moment without speaking. Then he said, "I try. Sometimes I don't… I don't feel I can. But I'll do everything I can to make things good."
Gert hugged him for that.
Karolina didn't have the courage to read Nico's card aloud. She handed it to her - a card shaped like a six-pointed star. Inside it said, "Your beauty makes me smile every day." Nico read it silently, then, smiling with a trace of mischief, read it aloud. "Flatterer," she sad to Karolina. "I bet you say that to all the girls."
Karolina smiled back. If she had thought of something to say, she couldn't have said it.
Molly said to Karolina, "You don't have a card."
"Of course not, silly. I made them."
"Well, it isn't fair that you don't have a compliment, so I'll give you one. You make the best Christmas ever."
"You make us smile, even when we don't have things to smile about," said Nico.
"You don't realize it, but you are the bravest of us all," said Chase.
"You give us hope, and that's what we need most," said Gert. "Old Lace told me to say that."
"You're gonna make me cry," said Karolina.
"Don't," said Molly. "Eat a cookie. And look!" She waved one of the sheets of paper Karolina on which Karolina had written lyrics in her colorful ink. "We can sing, too!"
"We can try," said Chase.
It was Nico who picked up a sheet, but without even looking at it, began to sing in her clear, melodic, rich voice:
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
And a happy New Year.
And Karolina thought that it surely wouldn't be possible to have a lovelier Christmas than they had made for themselves, here, together.
*