#mamascream

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the apartment not a creature was stirring, not even the trained dog who laid protectively at his stand-in master’s bedside.

That peace would not last very long though.

At the stroke of midnight, Casey slips out of the covers and sneaks through the bedroom. Upon reaching the door he looks back to check on his partner, who continues to sleep the night away, then the dog, who holds their head high and slightly tilted. Casey gives a hushed command for the dog to stay, and with a sigh Junior lowers his head but does not close his eyes.

Confident that he's now in the clear, Casey slips past the door and tip toes over to Eve’s room, slowly cracking open her door and wedging his face into the gap. “Pssssst.”

Nothing.

“Eeeeveeee.”

Still nothing.

“Eve, are you awake?”

After a moment of silence, there is a hushed, “I am awake.”

“Cool,” Casey opens the door all the way and grins at his pseudo-adopted-daughter. “Wanna go check out our Christmas presents?”

She responds to his question with a frown. “I don’t think we’re suppose to open our presents until Christmas morning.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s Christmas!” Casey beamed at her. “It’s officially Christmas. Pretty sure AM means morning, right?”

“That is correct.”

“And it’s,” a quick glance at the clock. “Looks like twelve o... something. It’s past midnight, twelve AM. It’s morning, specifically Christmas morning.”

The frown on Eve’s face shrinks a bit then gradually turns into a smile. “It is.”

“Sooooooo,” Casey’s grin broadens, “whaddya say, kiddo?”

Eve sits up in her bed and asks, “is Gabe awake?”

“Nah. Geezer is still restin’. We’re okay though. I can wrap everything up again so we can reopen our presents when he gets up later.”

Eve frown returns as she gets out of bed and meets Casey at the door. “That doesn’t seem very...” She waves her hand around, trying to come up with a word. “Right?”

"It’s cool.” Casey leads her to the living room, where their tiny, plastic, presenting guarding tree awaits. He plops himself on the floor near the tree and starts grabbing for presents while Eve takes a seat beside him. “Alright, kiddo,” he holds up two of her presents in his hands, one wrapped in red paper; the other blue. “Which one you wanna open first?”

“Pick the red one.” Gabe answers, startling them both. Yawning, the older man shuffles his way to the kitchen area and pours himself a cup of coffee while Junior trots over to lay between Eve and Casey.

“Gaaabe, hey,” Casey tosses the presents back under the tree, nearly knocking it over and stands up. “Whatchu doing up this late?”

“I could ask you both the same thing.” Gabe puts his cup in the microwave for a minute and smiles at his flatmates, easing some of the tension in the room.

“Pssh, we were.. We were just--”

“Going to start Christmas early without me,” the older man interrupts then taps at his left ear. “Just because this ear is burnt does not mean I cannot hear you two plotting behind my back.”

“We’re sorry, Gabe,” Eve chimes in, looking sorrowful. “We didn’t mean to exclude you.”

“It’s fine, Masā.” The microwave dings and Gabe pulls out his coffee, then shuffles over to the couch. “It’s natural for children to be excited on such a holiday.”

Casey puffs out his chest defensively. “Are you calling me a child?”

“I have called you many things, Qiṭār,” Gabe hums. “Child is hardly an insult.”

Casey huffs in disagreement and sits back down. “Yeah, well, I’m taking back your Christmas present, you butt.”

"Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“You ever wonder why we’re here?”

Gabe frowned thoughtfully. He thought about that often - project freelancer, the Meta, the agents getting into some kind of civil war then scattering to the wind. None of it made a lot of sense to him. Then again, he had deliberately ignored it. "Yes.” His finally answered a long period of silence, frown deepening as he thought about it more. “I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on though, just kept focused on my job - making you guys good, good like the Director’s top eight.” His heart suddenly sank at the memory of them. Those agents were just kids, they all were. Casey would probably remark how everyone was a kid compared to him, which was true but no less depressing. Children weren’t suppose to be soldiers. “Something went wrong though, something... malfunctioned. When the Director failed to keep it together his agents broke out in fights, big fights too not just little squabbles and brawls, and they brought the ship down.” The scars on his face started to tingle and he touched them, trying to rub off the ghostly pain. “I figured that was a good opportunity to run because whatever was going on there was wrong, and I didn’t want us to be a part of it anymore.”

Silence fell between them, and when Gabe finally rubbed off his ‘pain’ Casey spoke up again. “Dude...”

“What?”

“I was just askin’ ‘bout why we’re in the canyon.”

“Oh.” The older man coughed to hide his embarrassment. “Well... You know why. The warthog ran out of fuel and--”

“Yeah, I know, but,” Casey gestured to the canyon walls that boxed them in, “why here? Why are we huddling down in a place that has no way in or out unless you’ve got the ability to fly?”

“Because it seemed secure. No one can sneak up on us if they have to fly in.”

“Okay.” He nodded slowly, then asked, “what was all that other stuff?”

“Hm?”

“You were talkin’ about project freelancer and how stuff broke. What was all that about?”

“Oh.” Another cough. “It’s... It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“You sure it’s nothing?”

“Positive.”

“Okay.”

Silence.

“...do you wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“You sure you’re su--”

“Yes, Casey, I am very--”

“Hey guys!” Eve suddenly chirped from behind, startling the two men. “Whatcha talking about?”

“Nothing!”

“Nothing.”

She frowned. It didn’t sound like nothing was being talked when she came up to the top of the base. Gabe was fidgeting, fingers against his rifle, and Casey had his best-worst ‘I don’t know anything’ face on. Something that was definitely not nothing had been talked about, but since neither one wanted to talk about what that something was she had to accept their answers and let it go. If it was important they would tell her. “Okay. Well, since you’re talking about nothing you won’t mind if I talk about something then, right?”

The two men exchanged curious and confused glances. “No?”

“Great! Follow me then!”

“No waaaaay! You actually did it?” Casey was bouncing around, overjoyed to see the warthog in working condition again. Even Gabe was smiling, which had Eve swelling with pride.

“Yup!” She patted the hood affectionately. “It’s fully functional again.”

“Impressive.” Gabe nodded as he circled around the vehicle. “How’d you do it?”

"Well...” Now she was nervous, kicking the dirt at her feet. Casey didn’t seem to notice, but Gabe did. When he inclined his head Eve reluctantly continued. “I might have borrowed some solar panels from the base’s power supply and put them on the warthog.”

The elder man’s brow furrowed. “How much did you borrow?”

“Not much, just what was needed.”

“Hmm...” Casey frowned and crawled into the driver’s seat, jerking the wheel this way and that way. “I don’t see any solar panels here.”

“That’s because I replaced the windshield with them.”

“Oh.” There was a loud smack from Gabe facepalming out of embarrassment. “I knew that.”

“So it works?” Gabe sighs as he drops his hand.

“Yes.” Eve chirped, then added, “I think.”

“You think?”

“Well, it’s untested. I can get it running but I don’t know how well it works in the field. That’s why I brought you guys down here - to test it.”

“Dibs on driving!”

“Oh no.” Gabe glowered at the other man. “You are not driving.”

“Too bad I called dibs.”

“You’ll wreck it!”

“I. Called. Dibs.” Casey puffed up.

“He did call dibs.” Eve nodded solemnly. “He gets to drive.”

Gabe let out another sigh and buried his face into a hand. "Fine. Fine. Whatever. He drives, and I’ll take passenger in case something goes wrong.”