So This is Christmas
by EstiRose
December 20, 1993
Greer grimaced as she went by the shops. Santas and reindeer were plastered in shop windows, but you couldn’t tell by the teenagers and college students still running around in shorts and tshirts. The winters in California were way too warm, and people acted like it never got cold.
They’d freeze in Alaska.
Thoughts of her home state usually cheered her up. If her parents had still been alive, she’d have handed her latest assignment safely off to his or her permanent Watcher and headed off for a birthday-and-Christmas dinner with her parents and a few beloved uncles and aunts.
But her parents were dead now, and for that matter, were not really her parents. She’d always assumed that she was their child, not only by their love, but by their genes. Yes, she’d looked a lot like them, enough that they could pass her off as their natural child. And they’d never told her the truth. Probably would have never done so, and she would have gone to her grave thinking that she was their child.
They’d lied. She was old enough to know that parents lied. Why did it bother her so much?
Maybe it was because she didn’t really feel like she had a family anymore. She had aunts and uncles, true, and they’d always be dear to her, but she just didn’t feel as close now. Besides, why risk letting the Watchers know where she was?
The Watchers. Her other family. The one she was close to when she was so far away from her own. The people that she’d gone to parties with, and shared tips and information and unwound with. The ones who understood her better than anyone she knew.
Now she was on the run. Far from her not-really aunts and uncles, under the nose of her other family, and without a chance of being with someone she’d considered making a family with.
Michael. They’d made plans, way back when, to go to Fairbanks this year and celebrate with her aunts and uncles. No chance now. When she’d broken with the Watchers, she’d left Michael behind. After all, it was extremely rare for a Watcher to marry an Immortal, and that was only to keep tabs on them. How could he possibly keep tabs on her, since she knew what he was?
And now she was alone, walking the streets of a small, nameless university town three days before her birthday, five days before Christmas. Nearly thirty years old, not that it mattered. She was the same as she was a month ago. She’d be the same for as long as she lived. Hopefully it wouldn’t be that long.
She was not home. She would never be home. She had no home. Only the road and places where she could blend in and pretend that she belonged. At least most of the time.
But not this season. Not near Christmas. Not ever.