HISTORIAL NOTE: The events in this story take place the Christmas immediately preceeding the events in the novel Other People's Heroes.

Thanksgiving dinner again consisted of a cold turkey sandwich and a glass of milk at the diner down the street, the same as it had for three years now. She used to be quite a cook -- probably still was, she supposed -- but Nancy Drake never had an excuse to cook for anyone anymore. She didn’t let herself think about that. She just sat there, idly playing with her sole piece of jewelry -- a sparsely-decorated charm bracelet -- and finished off her milk.

A waitress was coming between the red-upholstered booths carrying a tray laden with coffee and a club sandwich for the only other customer, an old man who looked like Nancy, at least in that he was spending Thanksgiving in a diner because he had no one to be with. The fluorescent light had a cold flicker, making the waitress appear as though she was walking through a lightning storm.

Right as the waitress walked past Nancy’s stool, her feet slipped away and she pitched forward. Her tray fumbled from her hands and the coffee fell out into the air. The sandwich, in four segments, tumbled off the plate and a spray of potato chips fell into the air.

Where everything hung.

The coffee appeared frozen in place, the sandwich hovered as though gravity had suddenly changed its mind about claiming it. It wasn’t just the food, either. The waitress was motionless and frigid, the fluorescent light stopped flickering and the other customer was idly looking out the window at the cars in the street that were not going anywhere. Even over the grill, jumping grease bubbles stayed in the air instead of falling back down to the steel surface. Nancy got off her stool and physically shoved the waitress aright, plucking her tray from the air and re-balancing it in the woman’s hands. She took the sandwich segments and the potato chips and replaced them on the tray as well. The coffee was a little trickier, it had already begun to spill, but by dragging the cup at angles through the air she managed to scoop up most of the liquid. A few drops may still find their way to the linoleum, but no more. Nancy sat down and repositioned herself the way she had been sitting when everything stopped. Then, with a blink, everything began again. The waitress staggered for an instant, but kept her balance.

“What... I thought I tripped..." She looked back and forth between Nancy and the old man. “Didn’t you see that?”

“Nice car,” the old man said, paying no attention. Nancy just shook her head and lay a five-spot and three singles on the countertop. She got up to leave.

“Um... Happy Thanksgiving, ma’am,” the waitress said, still trying to figure out why the floor wasn’t covered in coffee and sandwich.

“Same to you,” Nancy said, stepping outside. A shadow passed over her and she looked up to see a man in red, white and blue with a flowing cape flying across the sun. The Liberator, Boston’s resident superhero. The Capes couldn’t take holidays off, after all. Nancy knew she never had.

* * *

She only made one stop on her way back to her apartment, at the greeting-card store that already had out its Christmas ornaments and decorations. She made this stop once a year, and if it ever occurred to her to cease the tradition, she dismissed the thought. The line of figurines was expanding, each a happy pair of children with round, cherub faces, arms locked or hands held, each holding a little sign that read “Our 1st Christmas Together,” or whatever year was appropriate. Nancy had always been impressed at how thorough this particular shop was, the figurines went all the way up to year 25. She didn’t think it cynical of them to not go any farther. If you were lucky enough to make it to 25, you didn’t need figurines. She shuffled through the figures and picked out the little ice-skating pair that designated year number 13.

“Hey, don’t I know you?” asked the girl at the counter as Nancy went to pay. For a moment, Nancy’s blood chilled. Oh sure, she’d worn a mask up until ten years ago, but it was just a small one, and her long mane of blond had stayed essentially the same since her early twenties. At 35, she occasionally thought about cutting it, but Edward always liked it this way. Ten years... this girl must have been about nine the last time Nancy was in uniform, but she was always half-afraid of some anonymous person coming up to her on the street and saying, “You’re her, aren’t you? You’re Lightning.”

“Know me? Oh, I don’t think so...”

“No, it is you. I’m sure of it.” The girl bent down under the counter and produced a small, pink paperback volume with a blue bookmark hanging about at page 250 or so. The title was Matilda’s Waltz, and the picture on the back undeniably familiar.

“You’re Nancy Drake, right? I love your books, I’ve read them all.”

Nancy let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Oh wow. You’re so great... how do you come up with all those ideas? I mean... I’ve read Jackie Collins and like that, but the people in your books are so real. I mean you can feel their hearts breaking, you know? How do you do that?”

“Practice,” Nancy said. She managed to escape what threatened to be a long and tedious conversation by means of a quick autograph and a hastily-imagined social arrangement, which the clerk was more than willing to accept. Then she headed out of the store and went in the direction of her apartment building.

She should have known the girl was just a reader -- nobody remembered Lightning anymore. She preferred it that way. And while Nancy Drake was something of a well-known figure, she kept up her hermit’s life. It suited her. She found it comically ironic that the best-selling romance novelist in New England hadn’t so much as brushed hands with a man in over a decade... not since Edward.

As she walked past an old, abandoned bookshop, letting this thought through her mind, she started to feel the corners of her cheeks curl up. Then she started to giggle a little. Then she stopped walking and looked at the shop. It wasn’t natural for her to start laughing like that. Something was wrong. She brushed some of the dust away from the shop window and peered in at a dirty, dusty, empty room. Nancy took a quick glance at her hand to make sure it was clean then ran it across the doorjamb. Her fingers came away with a slight rusty orange residue.

“Soul Wraiths,” she said. It had been twelve years since she and the rest of her team had thought these emotion-consuming spirits exterminated from the Earth. If they were back... well... this was bigger than her problems. Something needed to be done.

She rushed back to her apartment and ran to the telephone, not even bothering to unwrap her figurine. She picked up the receiver and dialed one of the few personal numbers she still knew, although she rarely bothered to call it. There were a series of rings and finally a connection was made. A young male voice resonated in her ear. “Haaaaappy Thanksgiving, this is Jay.”

“Jay. It’s Nancy.”

“Nance? Oh, wow, it’s good to hear from you. What’s--”

“This isn’t a social call, Rookie. Soul Wraiths in Boston. Your people should check up on it.”

“Geez, are you kidding? We’ll be right out there. Say, do you--”

“I’m not getting involved anymore, Rookie, you know that. This is just a heads-up, for old times sake.”

“Well... if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Happy Thanksgiving.” She hung up the phone and, satisfied that her civic duty was fulfilled, went to the closet and began taking out her Christmas decorations.

* * *

Her decorations were pretty meager. The tree was an artificial one-foot sprig that she put away in its box each New Year’s Day, still fully decorated, waiting for the moment in eleven months when she would allow it to see the light again. She put it in the center of her dining room table and plugged it in. All the lights were good this year. Good, she wasn’t up for replacing them.

Then she took out the box with her collection of figurines. The first-year figure, a boy and girl on a holly-decked swing together, she put on her bookshelf facing the room -- after getting a small lion on her charm bracelet caught in the figure and untangling it. The only other charm on the bracelet, a tiny bolt of lightning, escaped. Year two, where the couple was building a snowman, also faced out, as did the dancing couple of year three.

Beginning with year four, the couples faced backwards. She lined up nine of the figures this way, then carefully unwrapped year thirteen and put it at the end of the line, also facing away.

That last figurine was lined up exactly with one of the few magazines she kept on her bookshelf, an old edition of Powerlines, the first news magazine devoted exclusively to Capes and Masks. Edward was on the cover. Oh, she was one of the few people on Earth who would call him that, but beneath the red and black uniform, the proud golden emblem, it was her Edward. He, like Nancy and Jay, had been a Cape too, perhaps the finest of them all. But for all that none of the other heroes on Earth had ever been able to do something so simple as avenge him.

“Another year, Edward,” she said, “ten of them now, and we still haven’t found him. I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”

It wasn’t her fault, everyone always said. They all knew the risks. Capes were like cops or firemen, sometimes they fell in the line of duty. And while death, for a superhero, sometimes turned out to be a temporary condition, in ten years there was no sign that Edward could possibly have survived.

She put away the magazine and turned back to her Christmas decorations, although she was already nearly finished.

* * *

She picked up a the next few weekly editions of Powerlines to see if there was any news about the battle with the Soul Wraiths. She didn’t bother with a television and she didn’t trust newspapers, but Powerlines was pretty reliable. It should be, their top reporter was really the superhero called Spectrum in disguise. Sooner or later, Nancy was certain, someone would figure out he just created a hologram beard when not in costume and his entire cover would be blown, it was such a lousy disguise. Until then, at least she knew his magazine could be counted on to get the story right.

When the story with the Wraiths broke the week before Christmas, it was Jay who nabbed the spotlight, and the cover. “Hotshot to Soul Wraiths: Get Out of Siegel!,” the cover blurb read. There was also a photo that showed him in midair, delivering a roundhouse blow to one of the glowing red creatures. That would go straight to the Rookie’s head, no doubt. Not that he didn’t deserve it. He’d tried his damndest to fill Edward’s shoes in the past ten years. He couldn’t, of course, but at least he tried.

The battle, it seemed, hadn’t taken place in Boston after all, but in Siegel City, where 99 percent of all superhero activity seemed to take place these days. The Wraiths, according to a the story, had tried to leech away the citizen’s “Christmas Spirit” to power their latest attempt at world domination. And as always seemed to be the case, at least once a year since she’d lost Edward, some second-stringer had died in the fighting. A villain, this time, a guy named Photon Man. Nancy hoped he didn’t have any family, for their sake, but at this point the news of a death just didn’t faze her that much.

She tossed the magazine aside and turned to her computer, where chapter six of her latest novel was waiting for her. Writing what her mother had always called “trashy romances,” even as she read them by the truckload, turned out to be the perfect occupation for the post-Edward Nancy Drake. Human contact was limited to shopping excursions and the occasional conference call with her editor, plus she had an outlet to focus all the scenarios she kept imagining where Edward miraculously returned. Her first few books had followed pretty much the same pattern -- the long-lost boyfriend or husband or fiancé returned from certain death, each scenario getting more elaborate and unlikely. Sometimes they were reunited. Sometimes not. Nancy didn’t restrict herself to the happy ending. Eventually she got out of the trap of the long-lost hero and began conjuring up more creative plots, but her earliest works were, for the most part, blatantly autobiographical. She suspected the same held true for most writers.

Her powers made the job even easier. Most media outlets -- even Powerlines -- had screwed that up pretty consistently over the years. Everyone seemed to be under the misconception that she had super-speed powers. In fact, she had the ability to speed up or slow down time itself, like she’d done to the waitress on Thanksgiving. After only a few hours worth of trials, Nancy had learned how to synchronize her personal typing speed exactly to the rate that her computer could process what she was inputting. She could literally write as fast as she could dream up the stories. In the nine years since her first sale, she’d turned out twenty-six lonely heart novels and, to her utmost shock, people actually seemed to be reading them.

Time slowed down around her as she shifted into the writing groove. A shadow crawled across the window as, in regular time, a bird flew by. The second hand on her clock moved infrequently at best. She and the computer were a perfect match for the time she was going to spend writing.

She’d made it five pages into chapter seven, where the tortured Monica Gacey was finding evidence that her husband had died at the hands of her own father, when the room began resonating with a low, thrumming sound. It was like a drawn-out “whump.” Nancy recognized it at once -- it wasn’t the first time she’d heard this particular sound while in her writing zone. She restored time to its usual flow and the “whump” shortened and the pitch rose until it was a rapid tapping on her window, which she reluctantly opened. “Come on in, Jay.”

The red-and-black clad Cape drifted into her office from her sixth-floor window, pulling back his mask to reveal the grinning face Edward had recruited only a year before they lost him. “Hey, Nance,” he said. “How are you?”

“Same as usual. What brings you to Boston?”

“Air currents. Heh.” His grin vanished in about as much time as it took him to accept that his joke had fallen flat. “I wanted to let you know we took care of those Wraiths for you.”

“So I read,” she said, pointing to the magazine on her desk. “Good work. How much damage did they do before you got them?”

“It was pretty bad, actually,” Jay said, “they managed to set up shop in nearly every major city in America before we caught them, but we should recover. Particle ran some calculations, said that the worst that will happen is a few less crappy Christmas specials this year. I say as long as they keep rerunning Charlie Brown, I’ll be happy.”

Nancy allowed herself one of her few genuine smiles. The kid (she didn’t care if he was 29 now, he’d always be “the kid” to her) always did know how to make her laugh. “You could have told me that on the phone, you know. And don’t try to convince me that you just happened to be in the area. You guys never leave Siegel anymore if you can help it.”

Jay sat down. “Truth? Some of the guys wanted to check up on you. I volunteered for the job. We just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Hey, Frontier Trace just hit number four on the New York Times list. I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know.”

“We just... hell, I just know how tough this time of year is on you. It was always... his favorite.”

“Yeah. It was.”

Jay’s smile dimmed a little with guilt -- guilt that he’d survived when Edward didn’t? Yeah, Jay was that type. He glanced over at the mini-tree that served as her primary decoration. “Hey, at least you’re keeping things festive.”

“I try my best. If you don’t mind, Jay, I was in the middle of a chapter. Cut to the chase?”

“Right. Well, Rick and Bonnie are having a sort of reunion thing on Christmas Day. Most of us don’t have a family, not in any traditional sense, anyway, and they asked me to extend the invitation.”

Nancy turned it over in her head for a moment... the prospect of seeing Rick and Bonnie, known to the world at large as Condor and Oriole, of getting together with her old teammates, of the whole team, the whole LightCorps being reunited.

With one exception.

“I... I don’t think so, Jay. Give ‘em a big ‘thanks anyway,’ but I just don’t think I’ll be up for it.”

“Are you ever going to be ‘up for it,’ Nance?” he asked. She didn’t answer.

* * *

On Christmas Eve, Nancy went to church more out of habit than out of any remaining faith. She saw a police chase on the streets and, just for an instant, felt the urge to leap in and interfere, but Liberator arrived on the scene and put a stop to it himself. Call it a Christmas present, she thought -- her overactive sense of responsibility didn’t have a chance to flare up and her exhausted guilt complex didn’t suffer an added burden.

There was a Santa Claus on the streetcorner, and a poor excuse for one, too. He was rail-thin, and his beard looked tired and scruffy. His eyes were a deep blue, but sunken into his head, and his cheeks could only have been described as “rosy” if the roses in question were pale as the snow. Nancy tried to walk past him without incident, but as soon as she was within five feet of him, those cold eyes locked onto her. She felt her neck tilting against her will and she stared at him, looking straight down those eyes like a tunnel.

“Help,” he whispered.

“Um... I don’t have any change,” she said. She tried to sidestep him, but he moved in front of her.

“Help,” he repeated.

“I really don’t think I have anything,” she said, even as she dropped her hand into her pocket, searching for even a single to give him.

“No,” he said, “help me.”

Nancy felt a chill race through her that had nothing to do with the nip in the air. She shuffled past the old man without a word and headed for her apartment, a good five blocks away. She didn’t use her powers, but she got there as fast as any normal human could.

She fished the key to the building out of her purse as she ran, hoping to get in before the strange man -- if he was so inclined -- could catch up to her. She tried to slide the key into the lock, but her hands were quivering a bit more than they should have been. He was probably just some homeless guy trying to get a meal or something, after all. Had it really been so long since she’d dealt with the unexpected that a simple plea scared her?

“Nancy?”

The key fell from her hand and clattered to the concrete steps. She turned remarkably slowly for someone once called the fastest woman on Earth. Five words, that was all she had heard of this tired, gruff voice before. It was unmistakable.

The old man was standing next to her, right up next to her. On the right. She’d been running from the left.

“Please, Nancy. I need your help.”

Secret identity be damned.

Nancy dropped time down to a crawl. At this speed a snail at a greyhound track would only have two to one odds against it. She scooped up her key, opened the door and charged up six flights of stairs to her apartment. She slammed the door, flicked the lock and deadbolt closed, secured every window and only then restarted time so she could set the security system. She slumped behind the chair in her office and looked at the telephone, briefly contemplating calling Jay. Then she realized how absurd that was -- she had six years of experience on him, even if she had been out of practice for ten years. If she called him for a creepy old man, she’d never hear the end of it. Even a creepy old man that could teleport or something. A creepy old man who knew her name.

“I need your help, Nancy.”

She didn’t turn around this time. She didn’t need to. She was looking into the monitor of her computer, which was off, and quite clearly showed the reflection of an anemic Santa Claus with a glowing nimbus of light around him.

“I need Lightning, Nancy.”

She turned around, feeling her throat constrict. “Who are you?” she managed to hiss. A small smile upturned his lips.

“Who am I Nancy? Surely it hasn’t been that long.”

She flicked her leg outwards, tripping him. When he hit the floor she catapulted out of her chair and landed on his back, twisting his arm behind him. “No. I hasn’t been that long, only ten years, and I haven’t forgotten everything. Now you tell me who you are and how you know who I am or you carry your right arm away with your left.”

“I’m Santa Claus. Kris Kringle. Saint Nick. I’d show you my driver’s license, but they don’t make you carry one to drive the sleigh.”

“I’m supposed to believe a skinny Santa Claus that breaks into my apartment uninvited?”

“I apologize. I’m used to having an open invitation in pretty much every home on Earth. You used to extend the same.”

“I’m sure I did,” she said, twisting the arm a little harder. The Santa Claus grunted.

“Must you do that?”

“Must you feed me your line of crap?”

“Easy Bake Oven!” he shouted. Her eyes opened wide and her grip involuntarily loosened a little.

“What did you say?”

“Easy Bake Oven,” he said. “That’s what you wanted for Christmas when you were seven years old.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t get one,” she said.

“That’s because on December 23 you tricked your little brother into climbing the storm gutter outside your house. He could have been hurt. I even had the oven packed and ready to be loaded into the sleigh when I got the notice that I had to switch you off the ‘Nice’ list. I didn’t like doing it, Nancy. If you had waited 36 hours the loot would have been in your hands.”

She let go of his arms entirely at that, standing up, her jaw open. He flexed his arm and pulled himself to his feet. “Does this mean you believe me?” he said.

“Not necessarily,” she said. “I’ve seen enough shapeshifters and mind-readers not to believe any weirdo who shows up knowing things about my childhood. But I’ve seen too much strange stuff to refuse to believe you, either. Convince me. Start with why Santa Claus is skinny this year.”

“The Soul Wraiths,” he said.

“What?”

“You didn’t think I only lived off cookies and milk, did you?” he said. “My power -- my very existence is dependent on the faith people have in me, and in this season. Those Wraiths ate up so much of the hope and love that exist this time of year. It’s causing me to waste away, Nancy. I don’t have the strength to do it this year... not on my own, anyway.”

“So you’re telling me your power wouldn’t build up eventually? Why come crawling to me?”

“A thousand years ago, it may not have mattered, Nancy,” he said, “but we live in such cynical times... times where people believe only in what they can see and touch. The faith of the children in a Santa Claus is one of the few intangibles left. If I miss even one year’s worth of my rounds, the loss of faith would be so devastating I may never recover.”

“And that would be the end of Christmas, I take it?” she said. “I’ve seen this Rankin-Bass special, I think.”

“Not at all, child,” Santa said. “I am not vain enough to believe this season exists because of me, or even that I am the primary participant. The season would survive, even if Santa Claus were to die.”

“Then why should I help you?”

He smiled again, and in that smile she caught a hint of a twinkle, one that almost made her think there was something to this after all. “Oh, Nancy, I saw the way you almost tried to stop that car chase this evening. I was listening in on the phone call when you warned Jay about the Soul Wraiths. I see a thousand other things you do every year, even out of costume, that prove to me you haven’t stopped caring entirely. Wouldn’t be enough for you to know you helped save a life?”

She folded her arms and gave him a skeptical smile. “You know what buttons to push, mister, I’ll give you that. What are you asking?”

“The toys are made,” he said, “and the route prepared. And I’ve found the help for the deliveries -- never you mind how. But I need your power, the power of Lightning, to slow down time for me this evening, or the toys will never be delivered in time.”

“You want me to slow down the entire world? I’ve never tried anything that big, I don’t even know if I could.”

“You could,” Santa said. “If you believe you could.”

“Oh man, this is a television special, isn’t it?”

“Nancy, will you help me?”

“I still don’t know that I believe you.”

His red-gloved hand reached into his natty beard with a scratching motion. Then he smiled and waved his hand in the air, a sack appearing from nowhere. She couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t quite as full as she would have assumed.

“How about this,” he said, reaching into the sack. “I have two presents for you this year, if you help me. One, you may open now, as evidence. The other will have to wait for Christmas morning.”

He pulled his hand from the sack holding two brightly wrapped parcels. They were both about six inches long, thin enough to be candles, and wrapped at the top with a bow. He placed them side-by-side on her desk. The wrapping of the one on the left looked like it consisted of a many multicolored cords wrapped together all the way up the package. The one on the right, on the other hand, looked like the cords hadn’t been woven at all, and were branching out in all directions with no discernable pattern or logic to them.

“What are they?” she asked.

“Something you want.”

She considered this for a long moment, then reached out and picked up the package on the left. She took the ribbon between her fingers and was about to pull, but looked up at Santa first.

“Go on,” he said.

She slid the ribbon off and opened up the paper. She never saw quite what was inside the package, because the light that consumed her at that moment was far too bright.

* * *

“I love it,” Edward said, holding up the sweater she gave him to his chest. It was orange and brown striped, and looked like something someone’s nearsighted grandmother would have crocheted just to get rid of the extra feet of yarn that was cluttering up her sewing closet. “It’s absolutely grand.”

“You’re lying,” she said.

“I most certainly am not.” His British accent still gave her gooseflesh, and the smile he wore was quite possibly the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Yes you are. You’re a wonderful man, Edward, and you’re the most beloved superhero on Earth because you’re so good and honest. And part of the reason you’re so honest is because you’re the worst liar I’ve ever seen. You hate the sweater.”

“I do not hate the sweater,” he insisted. “I’m not particularly fond of the way it looks, I admit, but I don’t hate the sweater itself. What is it, wool?”

“Cotton.”

“Oh, good. I’d hate to think innocent sheep are wandering around naked for this monstrosity.” She laughed at hit him at the same time. That was the sort of relationship they had, where either of them could slap the other on the arm or shoulder and it meant the same thing as a kiss, which is what he gave her in response to the blow. “All right,” he said, “my turn now.”

He stood up and walked around the apartment, which looked the same as it did when, in another time, Nancy wrote solitary novels about broken-hearted damsels. The only significant difference was the much wider array of Christmas decorations, including a four and a half-foot tree, and the bare bookshelf. He picked up the bag he’d brought in with him, which began beeping as he started rummaging through it.

“Edward, you’re smart enough to know not to give a woman something electronic.”

“It’s my beeper, darling.” He said “darling” in a that wonderful, sarcastic tone that he only used when he knew she’d hit him with a particularly clever wisecrack.

“Uh-oh. Which one?”

“LightCorps.”

“I’ll go suit up.”

“No, don’t.” He turned off the beeper and dropped it back into his bag. “I made arrangements with Condor and Oriole tonight.”

“What kind of arrangement?”

“The kind of arrangement where they remember what their first Christmas together was like and graciously agree to supply us with something of the same. Don’t worry, they promised to call if something tremendously difficult should come up, such as a giant alien threatening to eat New York or the like. But no less, if the alien’s only going to munch on New Jersey or something I say let him have the bloody thing.”

She laughed and he smiled -- they had a particularly good arrangement in that respect. He took out two packages, both about the same length but one considerably thicker. “This first one is actually a present for the both of us. Here.”

She took the package and opened it up to reveal a small white box. When she unfolded the top she pulled out a figurine of a little boy and a little girl out ice-skating together. They held a sign between them that read “Our 1st Christmas Together.”

“Oh, Edward, this is so sweet.”

“I thought it might be nice to establish a tradition or two. They had an entire line of these things at the store. I thought perhaps we can go out next year and purchase the next one together.”

“Next year?” Nancy said. “So... there’ll be a second Christmas?”

“I certainly hope so,” he said, and she kissed him for that, and he accepted. Then he handed her the second package, which was opened to reveal a gold charm bracelet.

“A lion and a lightning bolt,” she said. “Is this us?”

“Oh, you’re so smart,” he said.

“I love it. This is wonderful.”

“I thought it would be nice for you... just in case.”

She slid her hand into the bracelet and latched it. “In case what?”

“Well... let’s be honest, Nancy, you and I aren’t exactly in the safest line of work. I’m sure police officers and firemen often give their girls sort of... ‘in case’ gifts.”

“Most firemen don’t have their girls putting their lives on the line with them,” she said. “I’m not saying nothing could ever happen, but hasn’t it occurred to you that I have just as good a chance of... not making it as you do?”

“It has,” he said. “But frankly, I think I’d rather fall myself than let anything happen to you.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Sorry.”

It was, in fact, the first conversation either of them had about the chances of one of them dying in the three years they had been members of the LightCorps together. Of course, it was the first Christmas they had being a “them” instead of being two teammates, two comrades, but nothing more. Nancy didn’t quite remember what happened to change it, but she knew that the initial moves had been hers, and she had always been mildly nervous that he was only reacting to her affections rather than expressing his own. A silly paranoia, she knew, but one she couldn’t avoid.

“I know it’s possible, Edward,” she said, “but... the thought of losing you now, just when we’ve become something... really special.”

“I think we’re special too,” he said. “But the lunatics that are out there trying to kill us won’t care.”

“I know,” she said, taking the figurine and putting it on the bookshelf. “Do we have to have this conversation, Edward? It’s Christmas Eve.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you. I’d jump off bridges to keep from upsetting you.”

“Well yeah, but you can fly.”

He laughed. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” That’s when something inside her bubbled to the surface and forced its way out of her mouth, something neither of them had said before, at least not since their attraction had been confessed. “Edward?”

“Yes?”

“ I love you.”

His face grew longer in a look of unmistakable surprise and she spun around, pretending that she was adjusting the figure. Stupid, stupid, how could she have said something so stupid? “God, I’m sorry--”

“Sorry? Dear God, don’t be sorry.” His voice was cracking, and when Nancy turned around she saw the most powerful man on Earth coming up behind her with a single tear rolling down his cheek.

“Are you crying?”

“I... I just didn’t expect that.”

“Edward, you’ve had girlfriends. Do you mean no one has ever said that to you before?”

“Well...” he placed a hand on her should and turned her until their eyes met. There were still a few tears in his. “No one else has ever said it first before.”

As he kissed her, the light roared up again and he was gone, but she could still feel him on her lips, twelve years later.

* * *

Nancy’s mind crunched as she absorbed the revelation that it was now, not then, that the man holding her by the hand was not Edward, that although the memory she had just tasted was wonderful it was only that, a memory. “What was...” she started to ask before she realized that was the wrong question. “Why did you give me that?”

“Because you needed to remember,” he said, and she noticed that his cheeks were a little rounder, that they had some of their pink back. And the twinkle in his eye, before only hinted at, was now quite evident.

“Will you help me, Nancy?”

She smiled -- one of her first genuine smiles in a long time.

“Hey,” she said, “who could say ‘no’ to Santa Claus? So... what do I do?”

“You’re already doing it.”

She glanced around and saw he was right. The clocks were not moving, the refrigerator was not humming. She had become so lost in the memory of Edward that she’d tried to preserve it the only way she knew how -- by freezing time.

“It’s not quite enough,” he said, “not yet. Time has only slowed for us, in this room. Now reach out. That’s all you have to do. Just... reach... out.”

Nancy sent her power out and she felt the world’s spin change to match her own slowed-down time. First, here in Boston, cars stopped, drinks were frozen in mid-pour, parents hastily attempting to assemble toys were trapped trying to untangle a bicycle chain.

Elsewhere, birds stopped flying but did not fall. Hearts stopped beating but no one died. Everywhere there was a great freeze, a great Slowing, and the whole world, in very literal terms, grew still.

The strain was enormous. Nancy had never expended so much power before and she had no idea how long she would have to hold it.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now,” he said, “my friends go to work.”

Nancy could feel, in the middle of the stillness, motion. It began somewhere in the north and it spread, branching out like roots, creeping down the whole of the world.

And he knew everything. Each time one of the roots stopped and touched a child, it asked the same question. The answers were almost never the same -- building blocks, a teddy bear, a football, a video game. She was feeling the entirety, the now, and with each stop, each time her companion gave of himself, his smile grew larger.

But for all her power, Nancy had to remember that she did not really stop time, just slow it down so much that its passage became imperceptible. And as time did creep, and as the first children woke up and found Christmas morning, the visitor’s smile grew brighter, his figure fuller and more robust and finally, after what felt to Nancy like centuries, the job was done and the twinkle in his eye was so bright that she had only seen its like once before, in Edward’s last moments, and she cried out in grief and joy as she finally released her power and allowed the world to begin again.

* * *

When she awoke to a larger, warmer world, she was surprised to find her friend still there, looking plump and jolly and quite convincing, even to a faithless cynic like herself.

“You’re still here,” she said.

“I owed you a thank you.”

“No you didn’t. But you’re welcome.”

The sun shone in her window and she realized she’d slept the whole night right there on the floor of her office. And although she was tired, she’d never felt more alive.

“What are you?” she asked. “What are you really?”

“I’m old Saint Nick.”

“Oh I know that,” she said, “But what are you? You’re not normal, not a man... not even a jolly old elf.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’ve met elves?”

“I have, actually,” she said. “I used to be in a pretty eclectic line of work, you may recall. But you’re something else. What? An alien? Ghost? Some sort of funky interdimensional spirit?”

“I’m a spirit all right,” he said. “Let’s leave it at that.”

“Okay.”

“I suppose I’ll be going home, now. I’ll be more than well enough to do this myself next year.”

“Good-bye, then.”

He stood up and shook himself. He lifted a hand to his face, but before he made contact, he nodded to her desk. “It’s Christmas morning, Nancy. Open your present.”

And then he lay a finger aside of his nose, and he was gone.

Nancy lifted the small package from her desk, the one with the wild, multicolored cords in the wrapping. The other one was a memory, was the past. What then, was this?

She opened the top and peered in and, like before, she was consumed by light.

The vision was different this time, not a memory, not even something that definitely belonged to her, but she knew it was real. She saw Jay, first, not as he was years ago, but as he was now, stronger and prouder, but with sadder eyes. He was in uniform, in battle, the way she always thought of him.

And he was not alone.

At his side was a young man -- no older than she herself had been when she last became Lightning -- wearing a modified version of the uniform Edward used to wear, only darker, with muted colors. He wore it well.

And standing with them both, clad in his own uniform, looking not a day older than he had the last time she saw him, looking even stronger and prouder than ever, was Edward himself. Alive, and breathing, and fighting on.

And the vision ended. The package and the wrapping glittered away into thin air, and she felt a rush of warmth envelop her.

If the first package was the past...

She got up, showered, and dressed in her most warmest, most festive clothes, then turned her powers on herself, speeding up enough so that the journey to Siegel City would take no time at all. Walking through her living room, she stopped and looked at the row of figurines on her bookshelf. Before she left she took the newest figure, “Our 13th Christmas Together,” and turned it around to face the room and the decorations, turned it away from the magazine on the shelf with Edward’s picture on the cover, turned it so that the little boy and the little girl were finally looking ahead.