#*cd

i.

the first year, it takes her by surprise. it’s not their first christmas--they hadn’t been able to stand each other enough to even consider exchanging gifts for that one. they’ve known each other for a little while, have grown a little closer, but the neatly wrapped box on her desk still brings her up short. she recognizes his handwriting on the tag, with a note about seeing her in the new year that she discards with the wrapping paper. inside the box is a little model of her plane, her callsign etched into the metal in looping script. despite her hurry to get out of the office and on the road toward boston, she takes the extra couple of minutes to rearrange things so she can station it at the corner of her desk. 

ii.

it’s another year when they just miss each other. he’s headed out a few hours before she makes it back to the city. she leaves the present on his desk on her way out of town and the obnoxiously bright and merry bag against the backdrop of his tidy, neutral office is a stark enough difference that it makes her smile. she’s damn proud of this gift. it had required a trip into enemy territory, some light bribery, and some flexing of superhero muscles. but she had made it out with a louisville slugger dotted with yankee signatures and it’s both her proudest and most shameful achievement of the year.

iii.

they don’t speak anymore. they don’t see each other. they barely spend time in the same city, let alone the same room. but she keeps tabs and knows he does, too. so she isn’t surprised that he knows where she’s staying, even if it does throw her for a loop to find the package waiting for her. there’s no note, just her name, and it’s all she needs to know immediately that it’s from him. it sits on the counter for a while, then gets pitched into the garbage until three in the morning when her determination withers and she retrieves the unopened box. inside, on a bed of tissue paper is a groszy coin that she recognizes immediately. she remembers throwing it at his head from the backseat of a shitty truck in poland. it’s probably not the same one, she reminds herself, because that would be crazy. it doesn’t quite stop the backflip her stomach does, though. 

iv.

carol tells herself she does it because of roman. they don’t see each other quite as much anymore, with her out of s.h.i.e.l.d. and him a full blown agent. they finally find a couple of hours together while christmas shopping and end up wandering around a department store. roman stops in front of a display of ties--ties like the ones he used to pick out for phil years ago when he and carol would go shopping. it’s something about his small smile, something about how he glances at her out of the corner of his eye but doesn’t say anything. he moves on to the next display but she lingers. eventually, she picks one that’s a deep green, one she’s not sure he’ll ever even wear. still, she buys it and sends it with roman without comment, working hard to ignore the look he gives her before they part. 

v.

the unsigned, unrecognized presents come like clockwork every year, arriving in her hangar the day before christmas eve. there are a few years she isn’t there to find them, when she discovers them a week later once she’s finally back in town, but they’re always waiting. the first year is the only year she thinks about not opening it, about tossing it out without giving it a glance. there are a couple of times that she considers getting rid of them once her curiosity’s been sated, but she never does. this is one of the years that sparks the debate. it’s a simple wooden box without decoration, a top that slides off to reveal a handful of pictures. most of them are ones she’s seen before, ones she remembers taking. and then there’s one of her taken in profile, a blanket wrapped around her with one shoulder bared. she’s on the porch at the cabin and she looks...comfortable. content. at home. carol buries it at the bottom of the pile and shuts the box in the bottom drawer of a tool chest.

vi.

her gifts are not nearly as consistent as his. she doesn’t send them every year and every year she does is preceded by weeks of internal debate, by the reminder that this could be the year he doesn’t leave one, and does she really want to prolong this? but some years, she just can’t resist. more often than not, it’s a throwaway gift. something that can be discarded or tossed in a drawer and forgotten about without a problem. finally, she settles on cards. they’re simple, unassuming. they expect nothing and send no message beyond ‘merry christmas.’ 

vii.

the first year after they’re married, it takes her a full day to understand the sense of anticipation when she’s walking through the hangar two days before christmas. it’s on her way out that it clicks. he’s always left something for her, every year for almost two decades. except this year. and it makes sense, given that she knows their presents are in their living room stacked around a tree, but she’s still surprised to find herself feeling just a touch disappointed. after a long moment stood at the door of the hangar, carol moves over to a filing cabinet tucked in the back corner. 

stacked in the bottom drawer, behind a sheaf of papers, are all the gifts she’s been unable to part with over the years. the coin is there, in the same small package it came in, right alongside the box of pictures. she takes them all out one by one and turns them over in her hands, studying the etching on a carved wooden ornament that looks like the windmill they nearly burnt to the ground while working, running her fingers over a wool scarf almost the exact shade of the one she vaguely remembers losing on a mission in ireland. there are a dozen little gifts, all of which hold memories both good and bad. knowing what she does now, they all seem so important, like the universe knew all along.